PC-NRLF 


THE   PRESENT   HOUR 

PERCY   MACKAYE 


"  • ; 


THE  CANTERBURY  PILGRIMS.     A  Comedy. 

JEANNE  D'ARC.     A  Tragedy. 

SAPPHO  AND  PHAON.     A  Tragedy. 

FENRIS  THE  WOLF.     A  Tragedy. 

A  GARLAND  TO  SYLVIA.     A  Dramatic  Reverie. 

THE  SCARECROW.    A  Tragedy  of  the  Ludicrous. 

YANKEE  FANTASIES.     Five  One-Act  Plays. 

MATER.     An  American  Study  in  Comedy. 

ANTI-MATRIMONY.    A  Satirical  Comedy. 

TO-MORROW.     A  Play  in  Three  Acts. 

A  THOUSAND  YEARS  AGO.    A  Romance  of  the  Orient. 

SANCTUARY.    A  Bird  Masque. 

SAINT  Louis.     A  Civic  Masque. 

THE  SISTINE  EVE,  AND  OTHER  POEMS. 

LINCOLN.    A  Centenary  Ode. 

URIEL,  AND  OTHER  POEMS. 

THE  PRESENT  HOUR.     A  Book  of  Poems. 

THE  PLAYHOUSE  AND  THE  PLAY.     Essays. 

THE  Civic  THEATRE.     Essays. 


Bt  all  JBoofcsellers 


THE   PEESENT  HOUR 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK    •    BOSTON   •    CHICAGO  •    DALLAS 
ATLANTA   •    SAN   FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &   CO.,  LIMITED 

LONDON  •    BOMBAY  •    CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  LTD. 

TORONTO 


From  a  photograph  by  Arnold  Genthe. 


THE  PRESENT  HOUR 

a  OBoofc  of 


BY 

PERCY  MACKAYE 


gorfc 

THE  MACMILLAN   COMPANY 
1914 


Ml  rights  reserved 


COPYRIGHT,  1914, 
BY  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped.    Published  November,  1914. 


NortoooS 

J.  S.  Gushing  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith  Co. 
Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


THE  VALIANT   DEFENDERS 

OF    CIVILIZATION 

THE  BELGIANS 


PREFACE 

POSTERITY  alone  can  correctly  estimate  and  appor 
tion  the  right  and  wrong  of  the  great  war  in  Europe. 

At  the  present  hour,  we  who  look  on  from  neutral 
America  can  but  judge  the  war's  issues  by  the  facts 
and  arguments  laid  before  us  by  the  press  and  spokes 
men  of  all  parties  in  the  conflict. 

By  such  evidence,  the  sympathies  of  our  citizens, 
by  overwhelming  majority,  are  with  the  cause  of  the 
Allies. 

In  thus  sympathizing  with  the  Allies,  we  do  so, 
I  believe,  whole-heartedly  in  the  faith  (based  on  the 
declared  policy  of  English  leaders)  that  they  are 
waging  against  militarism  a  fight  to  lessen  world 
armament  and  the  political  oppression  of  small  na 
tions.  If  they  win  and  the  stipulations  of  peace 
should  prove  otherwise,  our  revulsion  of  feeling 
would  surely  be  commensurate. 

ix 


PREFACE 


It  is  conceivable,  though  hardly  probable,  that 
future  evidence  may  alter  our  judgment  of  the  bel 
ligerents.  Our  reasons  remain  open  to  conviction. 
But  no  future  contingencies  can,  or  should,  stay  us 
now  from  taking  thought  and  expressing  it. 

In  view  of  the  world-misery  involved  by  the  war, 
our  reaction,  while  dispassionate,  cannot  possibly 
be  unimpassioned.  Not  to  feel  its  awful  issues 
passionately  would  be  uncivilized. 

Confronted  by  moral  and  social  issues  of  a  conflict 
the  most  poignant  in  history,  it  becomes  for  us  —  as 
neutrals,  who  alone  may  help  to  form  untainted  world- 
opinion —  a  pressing  duty  and  privilege  to  express 
ourselves. 


PERCY  MACKAYE. 


CORNISH,  NEW  HAMPSHIRE, 
October,  1914. 


CONTENTS 
I.    WAK 


PAGE 

FIGHT  :   THE  TALE  or  A  GUNNER     .         .        .        .        •        3 
THE  CONFLICT:   Six  SONNETS  .         .        ....        .29 

1.  To  William  Watson  in  England     .        .        •        •      29 

2.  American  Neutrality      ...•••      30 

3.  Peace      .        .        .    '    •        •        .        .       -        .31 

4.  Wilson    .        .        .        ...        •        •        •      32 

5.  Kruppism       '.        .        .        •        •        •        •        .33 

6.  The  Real  Germany         .        .        •        •        •        .34 
THE  LADS  OF  LIEGE          .......      35 

CARNAGE  :   Six  SONNETS    .       ;.        ...        .        .38 

1.  Doubt     .        .        .        •     .   *        •        •        •    '    •      38 

2.  The  Great  Negation        .        ...        •        .39 

3.  Louvain.        .        .        ,        •    >    •        •        •        •      40 

4.  Rheims  .        .        .        .        •        •        •  -     •        •      41 

5.  Kultur    .        .        .        ...        •        •        •      42 

6.  Destiny  .        .-       .        .        .....      43 

THE  MUFFLED  DRUMS        .......       44 

ANTWERP    .........        • 

MAGNA  CARTA    .        .        .        •        ••        •        •        '        * 

MEN  OF  CANADA        .        .        .        •        •        «        •        .50 
FRANCE       ..........       52 


HAUPTMANN 

NIETZSCHE 

THE  CHILD-DANCERS 


xii  CONTENTS 


BATTLEFIELDS    . 

57 

IN  MEMORIAM    .  _0 

58 

A  PRAYER  OF  THE  PEOPLES      .        .  g/\ 

II.     PEACE 


GOETHALS    .  .  «Q 

Do 


PANAMA  HYMN  . 
GOETHALS  .... 
A  CHILD  AT  THE  WICKET 

&E    . 

76 


..  71 

HYMN  FOB  EQUAL  SUFFRAGE    ....  74 

LEXINGTON 
SCHOOL       .         . 


.  Q1 

•  •  .           .        ol 

THE  PLAYER      .  Q0 

•  •  .         .       oy 

To  JOSEPHINE  PRESTON  PEABODY     .  92 

PROLOGUE  AND  EPILOGUE  TO  A  BIRD  MASQUE  .               94 

THE  SONG  SPARROW  .         .  99 

To  AN  UPLAND  PLOVER     .....  101 

RAIN  REVERY    .....  103 

THE  HEART  IN  THE  JAR   .  in« 

'               •               •  •              •        J.UO 

NOTES       .        . 


THE  PRESENT  HOUR 

I 
WAR 


FIGHT 

THE  TALE  OF  A  GUNNER  l 

I 

JOCK  bit  his  mittens  off  and  blew  his  thumbs; 
He  scraped  the  fresh  sleet  from  the  frozen  sign: 
MEN  WANTED  —  VOLUNTEERS.    Like  gusts  of  brine 

He  whiffed  deliriums 

Of  sound  - —  the  droning  roar  of  rolling  rolling  drums 
And  shrilling  fifes,  like  needles  in  his  spine, 
And  drank,  blood-bright  from  sunrise  and  wild  shore, 

The  wine  of  war. 

1  In  commemoration  of  the  last  naval  battle  between  English- 
speaking  peoples.    See  note  at  end  of  volume. 

3 


THE    PRESENT   HOUR 


With  ears  and  eyes  he  drank  and  dizzy  brain 
Till  all  the  snow  danced  red.     The  little  shacks 
That  lined  the  road  of  muffled  hackmatacks 

Were  roofed  with  the  red  stain, 
Which  spread  in  reeling  rings  on  icy-blue  Champlain 
And  splotched  the  's%y  like  daubs  of  sealing-wax, 
That  darkened  when  he  winked,  and  when  he  stared 

Caught  fire  and  flared. 

MEN  WANTED  —  VOLUNTEERS  !    The  village  street, 
Topped  by  the  slouching  store  and  slim  flagpole, 
Loomed  grand  as  Rome  to  his  expanding  soul ; 

Grandly  the  rhythmic  beat 
Of  feet  in  file  and  flags  and  fifes  and  filing  feet, 
The  roar  of  brass  and  unremitting  roll 
Of  drums  and  drums  bewitched  his  boyish  mood  — 

Till  he  hallooed. 

His  strident  echo  stung  the  lake's  wild  dawn 

And  startled  him  from  dreams.     Jock  rammed  his  cap 


FIGHT 


And  rubbed  a  numb  ear  with  the  furry  flap, 

Then  bolted  like  a  faun, 
Bounding  through  shin-deep  sleigh-ruts  in  his  shaggy 

brawn, 

Blowing  white  frost-wreaths  from  red  mouth  agap 
Till,  in  a  gabled  porch  beyond  tfiefstore, 

He  burst  the  door: 


"  Mother  I "  he  panted.  "  Hush  I  Your  Pa  ain't  up ; 
He's  worser  since  this  storm.  What's  struck  ye  so  ?  " 
"It's  volunteers!"  The  old  dame  stammered  "Oh!" 

And  stopped,  and  stirred  her  sup 
Of  morning  tea,  and  stared  down  in  the  trembling  cup. 
"They're  musterin'  on  the  common  now."     "I  know" 
She  nodded  feebly;   then  with  sharp  surmise 

She  raised  her  eyes : 

She  raised  her  eyes,  and  poured  their  light  on  him 
Who  towered  glowing  there  —  bright  lips  apart, 


6  THE   PRESENT   HOUR 

Cap  off,  and  brown  hair  towsled.     With  quick  smart 

She  felt  the  room  turn  dim 

And  seemed  she  heard,  far  off,  a  sound  of  cherubim 
Soothing  the  sudden  pain  about  her  heart.  — 
How  many  a  lonely  hour  of  after-woe 

She  saw  him  so ! 

"Jock!"    And  once  more  the  white  lips  murmured 

"Jock!" 

Her  fingers  slipped ;   the  spilling  teacup  fell 
And  shattered,  tinkling  —  but  broke  not  the  spell. 

His  heart  began  to  knock, 

Jangling  the  hollow  rhythm  of  the  ticking  clock. 
"Mother,  it's  fight,  and  men  are  wanted!"     "Well, 
Ah  well,  it's  men  may  kill  us  women's  joys, 

It's  men  —  not  boys!" 

"I'm  seventeen!    I  guess  that  seventeen—" 
"  My  little  Jock ! "     "  Little !    I'm  six-foot-one. 


FIGHT 


(Scorn  twitched  his  lip)     You  saw  me,  how  I  skun 

The  town  last  Halloween 
At  wrastlin'."     (Now  the  mother  shifted  tack.)     "  But 

Jean? 

You  won't  be  leavin'  Jean?"     "I  guess  a  gun 
Won't   rattle    her."      He    laughed,    and    turned    his 

head. 
His  face  grew  red. 


"  But  if  it  doos  —  a  gal  don't  understand : 

It's  fight!"     "Jock  boy,   your  Pa   can't  last  much 

more, 
And  who's  to  mind  the  stock  —  to  milk  and  chore  ?  " 

Jock  frowned  and  gnawed  his  hand. 
"Mother,  it's  men  must  mind  the  stock  —  our  own 

born  land, 

And  lick  the  invaders."     Slowly  in  the  door 
Stubbed  the  old  worn-out  man.     "Woman,  let  be! 

It's  liberty: 


8  THE   PRESENT   HOUR 

"It's  struck  him  like  fork-lightnin'  in  a  pine. 

I  felt  it,  too,  like  that  in  Seventy-six; 

And  now,  if  'twa'n't  for  creepin'  pains  and  cricks 

And  this  one  leg  o'  mine, 
I'd  holler  young  Jerusalem  like  him,  and  jine 
The   fight;    but   fight   don't    come    from    burnt-out 

wicks; 
It  comes  from  fire."     "Mebbe,"  she  said,  "it  comes 

From  fifes  and  drums." 


"Dad,  all  the  boys  are  down  from  the  back  hills. 
The  common's  cacklin'  like  hell's  cocks  and  hens; 
There's  swords  and  muskets  stacked  in  the  cow  pens 

And  knapsacks  in  the  mills; 
They   say   at   Isle   aux   Noix   redcoats    are    holding 

drills, 

And  we're  to  build  a  big  fleet  at  Vergennes. 
Dad,  can't  I  go?"     "I  reckon  you  're  a  man: 

Of  course  you  can. 


FIGHT 


"I'll  do  the  chores  to  home,  you  do  "em  thar!" 

" Dad  1"  —  "Lad!"     The    men    gripped    hands    and 

gazed  upon 
The  mother,  when  the  door  flew  wide:   There  shone 

A  young  face  like  a  star, 

A  gleam  of  bitter-sweet  'gainst  snowy  islands  far, 
A  freshness,  like  the  scent  of  cinnamon, 
Tingeing  the  air  with  ardor  and  bright  sheen. 

Jock  faltered:    "Jean!" 

"Jock,  don't  you  hear  the  drums  ?     I  dreamed  all  night 
I  heard  'em,  and  they  woke  me  in  black  dark. 
Quick,    ain't    you    comin'?     Can't    you    hear    'em? 
Hark  I 

The  men-folks  are  to  fight. 
I  wish  I  was  a  man!"     Jock  felt  his  throat  clutch 

tight. 

"Men-folks!"    It  lit  his  spirit  like  a  spark 
Flashing  the  pent  gunpowder  of  his  pride. 

"Come  on!"    he  cried. 


10  THE    PRESENT   HOUR 

"Here  —  wait!"    The  old  man  stumped  to  the  back 

wall 

And  handed  down  his  musket.     "You'll  want  this; 
And  mind  what  game  you're  after,  and  don't  miss. 

Goodbye:  I  guess  that's  all 
For  now.     Come  back  and  get  your  duds."    Jock, 

looming  tall 

Beside  his  glowing  sweetheart,  stooped  to  kiss 
The  little  shrunken  mother.     Tiptoe  she  rose 

And  clutched  him  —  close. 


In  both  her  twisted  hands  she  held  his  head 
Clutched  in  the  wild  remembrance  of  dim  years  — 
A  baby  head,  suckling,  half  dewed  with  tears; 

A  tired  boy  abed 

By  candlelight;   a  laughing  face  beside  the  red 
Log-fire ;    a  shock  of  curls  beneath  her  shears  — 
The  bright  hair  falling.     Ah,  she  tried  to  smother 

Her  wild  thoughts.  —  "Mother 


FIGHT  11 


"Mother!"      he     stuttered.     "Baby     Jock!"      she 

moaned 

And  looked  far  in  his  eyes.  —  And  he  was  gone. 
The   porch   door   banged.     Out   in   the   blood-bright 

dawn  , 

All  that  she  once  had  owned  — 
Her  heart's  proud  empire  —  passed,  her  life's  dream 

sank  unthroned. 

With  hands  still  reached,  she  stood  there  staring,  wan. 
"Hark,  woman!"   said  the  bowed  old  man,  "What's 

tolling?" 
Drums  —  drums  were  rolling. 


II 

Shy  wings  flashed  in  the  orchard,  glitter,  glitter; 
Blue    wings    bloomed    soft    through    blossom-colored 

leaves, 
And  Phoebe!    Phoebe!  whistled  from  gray  eaves 


12  THE   PRESENT    HOUR 

Through  water-shine  and  twitter 
And  spurt  of  flamey  green.     All  bane  of  earth  and 

bitter 

Took  life  and  tasted  sweet  at  the  glad  reprieves 
Of  Spring,  save  only  in  an  old  dame's  heart 

That  grieved  apart. 


Crook-back  and  small,  she  poled  the  big  wellsweep : 

Creak  went   the   pole;     the   bucket   came   up   brim 
ming. 

On  the  bright  water  lay  a  cricket  swimming 
Whose  brown  legs  tried  to  leap 

But,  draggling,  twitched  and  foundered  in  the  circling 
deep. 

The  old  dame  gasped;    her  thin  hand  snatched  him, 
skimming. 

"  Dear  Lord,  he's  drowned ! "  she  mumbled  with  dry 

lips: 
"The  ships!    the  ships  I" 


FIGHT  13 


Gently  she  laid  him  in  the  sun  and  dried 

The  little  dripping  body.     Suddenly 

Rose-red  gleamed  through  the  budding  apple-tree 

And  "Look!    a  letter!"    cried 

A  laughing  voice,  "and  lots  of  news  for  us  inside!" 
"How's    that,    Jean?    News   from   Jock!    Where  — 

where  is  he?" 
"Down    in     Vergennes  —  the    shipyards."     "Ships  I 

Ah,  no! 
It  can't  be  so." 

"He's  goin'  to  fight  with  guns  and  be  a  tar. 

See  here :   he's  wrote  himself.     The  post  was  late. 

He  couldn't  write  before.     The  ship  is  great ! 

She's  built,  from  keel  to  spar, 
And  called  the  Saratoga;   and  Jock's  got  a  scar 
Already—"     "Scar?"        the       mother       quavered. 

"Wait," 
Jean  rippled,  "let  me  read."     "Quick,  then,  my  dear, 

He'll  want  to  hear  — 


14  THE    PRESENT   HOUR 

"Jock's  Pa:    I  guess  we'll  find  him  in  the  yard. 
He  ain't  scarce  creepin'  round  these  days,  poor  Dan !" 
She  gripped  Jean's  arm  and  stumbled  as  they  ran, 

And  stopped  once,  breathing  hard. 
Around  them  chimney-swallows  skimmed  the  sheep- 
cropped  sward 

And  yellow  hornets  hummed.  —  The  sick  old  man 
Stirred  at  their  steps,  and  muttered  from  deep  muse : 

"Well,  Ma:    what  news?" 


"From  Jockie  —  there's  a  letter !"     In  his  chair 
The  bowed  form  sat  bolt  upright.     "What's  he  say?" 
"He's  wrote  to  Jean.     I  guess  it's  boys  their  way 

To  think  old  folks  don't  care 
For  letters."     "Girl,  read  out."    Jean  smoothed  her 

wilding  hair 

And  sat  beside  them.     Out  of  the  blue  day 
A  golden  robin  called ;   across  the  road 

A  heifer  lowed; 


FIGHT  15 


And  old  ears  listened  while   youth   read:    "'Friend 

Jean, 

Vergennes  :  here's  where  we've  played  a  Yankee  trick. 
I'm  layin'  in  my  bunk  by  Otter  Crick 

And  scribblin'  you  this  mean 
Scrawl  for  to  tell  the  news  —  what-all  I've  heerd  and 

seen: 

Jennie,  we've  built  a  ship,  and  built  her  slick  — 
A  swan  !  —  a  seven  hundred  forty  tonner, 

And  I'm  first  gunner. 


" '  You  ought  to  seen  us  launch  her  t'other  day  I 
Tell  Dad  we've  christened  her  for  a  fight  of  hisn 
He  fought  at  Saratoga.  Now  just  listen ! 

She's  twice  as  big,  folks  say, 
As  Perry's  ship  that  took  the  prize  at  Put-in  Bay; 
Yet  forty  days  ago,  hull,  masts  and  mizzen, 
The  whole  of  her  was  growin',  live  and  limber, 

In  God's  green  timber. 


16  THE    PRESENT    HOUR 

" '  I  helped  to  fell  her  main-mast  back  in  March. 
The  woods  was  snowed  knee-deep.     She  was  a  won 
der: 
A  straight  white  pine.     She  fell  like  roarin'  thunder 

And  left  a  blue-sky  arch 

Above  her,  bustin'  all  to  kindlin's  a  tall  larch.  — 
Mebbe  the  scart  jack-rabbits  skun  from  under! 
Us  boys  hoorayed,  and  me  and  every  noodle 

Yelled  Yankee-Doodle! 


"'My,  how  we  haw'd  and  gee'd  the  big  ox-sledges 
Haulin'  her  long  trunk  through  the  hemlock  dells, 
A-bellerin'  to  the  tinkle-tankle  bells, 

And  blunted  our  ax  edges 

Hackin'  new  roads  of  ice  Alongside  the  rocky  ledges. 
We  stalled  her  twice,  but  gave  the  oxen  spells 
And  yanked  her  through  at  last  on  the  home-clearin'.  — 

Lord,  wa'n't  we  cheerinM 


FIGHT  17 


"' Since  then  I've  seen  her  born,  as  you  might  say: 
Born  out  of  fire  and  water  and  men's  sweating 
Blast-furnace  rairin'  and  red  anvils  frettin' 

And  sawmills,  night  and  day, 

Screech-owlin'  like  'twas  Satan's  rumhouse  run  away 
Smellin'  of  tar  and  pitch.     But  I'm  forgettin' 
The  man  that's  primed  her  guns  and  paid  her  score : 

The  .Commodore. 

" '  Macdonough  —  he's  her  master,  and  she  knows 
His  voice,  like  he  was  talkin'  to  his  hound. 
There  ain't  a  man  of  her  but  ruther'd  drownd 

Than  tread  upon  his  toes; 

And  yet  with  his  red  cheeks  and  twinklin'  eyes,  a  rose 
Ain't  friendlier  than  his  looks  be.  When  he's  round, 
He  makes  you  feel  like  you're  a  gentleman 

American. 

r"But  I  must  tell  you  how  we're  hidin'  here. 

This  Otter  Crick  is  like  a  crook-neck  jug 
c 


18  THE   PRESENT   HOUR 

And  we're  inside.     The  redcoats  want  to  plug 

The  mouth,  and  cork  our  beer; 
So  last  week  Downie  sailed  his  British  lake-fleet  near 
To  fill  our  channel,  but  us  boys  had  dug 
Big  shore  intrenchments,  and  our  batteries 

Stung  'em  like  bees 

" '  Till  they  skedaddled  whimperin'  up  the  lake ; 
But  while  the  shots  was  flyin',  in  the  scrimmage, 
I  caught  a  ball  that  scotched  my  livin'  image.  — 

Now  Jean,  for  Sam  Hill's  sake, 

Don't  let-on  this  to  Mother,  for  you  know  she'd  make 
A  deary-me-in'  that  would  last  a  grim  age. 
'Tain't  much,  but  when  a  feller  goes  to  war 

What's  he  go  for 

" '  If  'tain't  to  fight,  and  take  his  chances  ? ' "  Jean 
Stopped  and  looked  down.     The  mother  did  not  speak. 
"Go  on,"  said  the  old  man.     Mush  tinged  her  cheek. 
"Truly  I  didn't  mean  — 


FIGHT  19 


There  ain't  much  more.     He  says :    '  Goodbye  now, 

little  queen; 

We're  due  to  sail  for  Plattsburgh  this  day  week. 
Meantime  I'm  hopin'  hard  and  takin'  stock. 
Your  obedient  —  Jock.'  " 

The  girl's  voice  ceased  in  silence.     Glitter,  glitter, 

The     shy    wings    flashed     through     blossom-colored 

leaves, 
And  Phoebe!    Phoebe!  whistled  from  gray  eaves 

Through  water-shine  and  twitter 
And  spurt  of  flamey  green.     But  bane  of  thought  is 

bitter. 

The    mother's    heart    spurned    May's    sweet    make- 
believes, 
For   there,    through   falling   masts   and   gaunt   ships 

looming, 
Guns  —  guns  were  booming. 


20  THE   PRESENT   HOUR 

III 

Plattsburgh  —  and  windless  beauty  on  the  bay ; 
Autumnal  morning  and  the  sun  at  seven: 
Southward  a  wedge  of  wild  ducks  in  the  heaven 

Dwindles,  and  far  away 
Dim  mountains  watch  the  lake,  where  lurking  for  their 

prey 

Lie,  with  their  muzzled  thunders  and  pent  levin, 
The  warships  —  Eagle,  Preble,  Saratoga, 

Ticonderoga. 

And  now  a  little  wind  from  the  northwest 

Flutters  the  trembling  blue  with  snowy  flecks. 
A  gunner,  on  Macdonough's  silent  decks, 

Peers  from  his  cannon's  rest, 

Staring  beyond  the  low  north  headland.     Crest  on  crest 
Behind  green  spruce-tops,  soft  as  wildfowls'  necks, 
Glide  the  bright  spars  and  masts  and  whitened  wales 

Of  bellying  sails. 


FIGHT  21 


Rounding,  the  British  lake-birds  loom  in  view 
Ruffling  their  wings  in  silvery  arrogance: 
Chubb,  Linnet,  Finch,  and  lordly  Confiance 

Leading  with  Downie's  crew 
The  line.  —  With  long  booms  swung  to  starboard  they 

heave  to, 

Whistling  their  flock  of  galleys  who  advance 
Behind,  then  toward  the  Yankees,  four  abreast, 

Tack  landward,  west. 


Landward  the  watching  townsfolk  strew  the  shore; 
Mist-banks  of  human  beings  blur  the  bluffs 
And    blacken    the   roofs,    like    swarms    of    roosting 
choughs. 

Waiting  the  cannon's  roar 

A  nation  holds  its  breath  for  knell  of  Nevermore 
Or  peal  of  life :   this  hour  shall  cast  the  sloughs 
Of  generations  —  and  one  old  dame's  joy : 

Her  gunner  boy. 


22  THE    PRESENT   HOUR 

One  moment  on  the  quarter  deck  Jock  kneels 
Beside  his  Commodore  and  fighting  squad. 
Their  heads  are  bowed,  their  prayers  go  up  toward 
God  — 

Toward  God,  to  whom  appeals 
Still   rise   in   pain   and   mangling   wrath  from    blind 

ordeals 

Of  man,  still  boastful  of  his  brother's  blood.  — 
They  stand  from  prayer.     Swift  comes  and  silently 

The  enemy. 

Macdonough  holds  his  men,  alert,  devout : 
"He  that  wavereth  is  like  a  wave  of  the  sea 
Driven  with  the  wind.     Behold  the  ships,  that  be 

So  great,  are  turned  about 
Even  with  a  little  helm."      Jock  tightens  the  blue 

clout 

Around  his  waist,  and  watches  casually 
Close-by  a  game-cock,  in  a  coop,  who  stirs 

And  spreads  his  spurs. 


FIGHT  23 


Now,  bristling  near,  the  British  war-birds  swoop 
Wings,  and  the  Yankee  Eagle  screams  in  fire; 
The  English  Linnet  answers,  aiming  higher, 

And  crash  along  Jock's  poop 

Her  hurtling  shot  of  iron  crackles  the  game-cock's  coop, 
Where  lo !   the  ribald  cock,  like  a  town  crier, 
Strutting  a  gunslide,  flaps  to  the  cheering  crew  — 

Yankee-doodle-doo  ! 


Boys  yell,  and  yapping  laughter  fills  the  roar: 
"  You  bet  we'll  do  'em  I "     "  You're  a  prophet,  cocky ! " 
"Hooray,    old    rooster!"     "Hip,    hip,    hip!"     cries 
Jockie. 

Calmly  the  Commodore 

Touches  his  cannon's  fuse  and  fires  a  twenty-four. 
Smoke  belches  black.     "Huzza!    That's  blowed  'em 

pocky!" 
And  Downie's  men,  like  pins  before  the  bowling, 

Fall  scatter-rolling. 


24  THE    PRESENT    HOUR 

Boom!  flash  the  long  guns,  echoed  by  the  galleys. 
The  Confiance,  wind-baffled  in  the  bay, 
With  both  her  port  bow-anchors  torn  away, 

Flutters,  but  proudly  rallies 

To  broadside,  while  her  gunboats  range  the  water-alleys. 
Then  Downie  grips  Macdonough  in  the  fray, 
And  double-shotted  from  his  roaring  flail 

Hurls  the  black  hail. 

The  hail  turns  red,  and  drips  in  the  hot  gloom. 
Jock  snuffs  the  reek  and  spits  it  from  his  mouth 
And  grapples  with  great  winds.     The  winds  blow  south, 

And  scent  of  lilac  bloom 

Steals  from  his  mother's  porch  in  his  still  sleeping  room. 
Lilacs  !  —  But  now  it  stinks  of  blood  and  drouth ! 
He  staggers  up,  and  stares  at  blinding  light : 

"God!    This  is  fight!" 

Fight !  —  The  sharp  loathing  retches  in  his  loins ; 
He  gulps  the  black  air,  like  a  drowner  swimming, 


FIGHT  25 


Where  little  round  suns  in  a  dance  go  rimming 

The  dark  with  golden  coins: 
Round  him  and  round  the  splintering  masts  and  jangled 

quoins 

Reel,  rattling,  and  overhead  he  hears  the  hymning  — 
Lonely  and  loud  —  of  ululating  choirs 

Strangling  with  wires. 

Fight !  —  But  no  more  the  roll  of  chanting  drums, 
The  fifing  flare,  the  flags,  the  magic  spume 
Filling  his  spirit  with  a  wild  perfume; 

Now  noisome  anguish  numbs 

His  sense,  that  mocks  and  leers  at  monstrous  vacuums. 
Whang  !  splits  the  spanker  near  him,  and  the  boom 
Crushes  Macdonough,  in  a  jumbled  wreck, 

Stunned  on  the  deck. 

No  time  to  glance  where  wounded  leaders  lie, 
Or  think  on  fallen  sparrows  in  the  storm  — 
Only  to  fight !     The  prone  commander's  form 
Stirs,  rises  stumblingly 


26  THE    PRESENT   HOUR 

And  gropes  where,  under  shrieking  grape  and  musketry, 
Men's  bodies  wamble  like  a  mangled  swarm 
Of  bees.     He  bends  to  sight  his  gun  again, 
Bleeding,  and  then  — 


Oh,  out  of  void  and  old  oblivion 

And  reptile  slime  first  rose  Apollo's  head : 

And  God  in  likeness  of  Himself,  'tis  said, 

Created  such  an  one, 

Now  shaping  Shakspere's  forehead,  now  Napoleon, 
Various,  by  infinite  invention  bred, 
In  His  own  image  moulding  beautiful 

The  human  skull. 

Jock  lifts  his  head ;   Macdonough  sights  his  gun 
To  fire  —  but  in  his  face  a  ball  of  flesh, 
A  whizzing  clod,  has  hurled  him  in  a  mesh 

Of  tangled  rope  and  tun, 
While  still  about  the  deck  the  lubber  clod  is  spun 


FIGHT  27 


And,  bouncing  from  the  rail,  lies  in  a  plesh 
Of  oozing  blood,  upstaring  eyeless,  red  — 

A   gunner's   head. 

******* 

Above  the  ships,  enormous  from  the  lake, 
Rises  a  wraith  —  a  phantom  dim  and  gory, 
Lifting  her  wondrous  limbs  of  smoke  and  glory; 

And   little   children   quake 

And  lordly  nations  bow  their  foreheads  for  her  sake, 
And  bards  proclaim  her  in  their  fiery  story; 
And  in  her  phantom  breast,  heartless,  unheeding, 

Hearts  —  hearts  are  bleeding. 

IV 

Macdonough  lies  with  Downie  in  one  land. 
Victor  and  vanquished  long  ago  were  peers. 
Held  in  the  grip  of  peace  an  hundred  years 

England  has  laid  her  hand 

In  ours,  and  we  have  held  (and  still  shall  hold)  the  band 
That  makes  us  brothers  of  the  hemispheres; 


28  THE  PRESENT  HOUR 

Yea,  still  shall  keep  the  lasting  brotherhood 
Of  law  and  blood. 

Yet  one  whose  terror  racked  us  long  of  yore 
Still  wreaks  upon  the  world  her  lawless  might: 
Out  of  the  deeps  again  the  phantom  Fight 

Looms  on  her  wings  of  war, 

Sowing  in  armed  camps  and  fields  her  venomed  spore, 
Embattling  monarch's  whim  against  man's  right, 
Trampling  with  iron  hoofs  the  blooms  of  time 

Back  in  the  slime. 

We,  who  from  dreams  of  justice,  dearly  wrought, 
First  rose  in  the  eyes  of  patient  Washington, 
And  through  the  molten  heart  of  Lincoln  won 

To  liberty  forgot, 

Now,  standing  lone  in  peace  'mid  titans  strange  dis 
traught, 

Pray  much  for  patience,  more  —  God's  will  be  done  !  — 
For  vision  and  for  power  nobly  to  see 

The  world  made  free. 


THE  CONFLICT:    Six  SONNETS 
[August,  1914] 

I 
TO  WILLIAM  WATSON  IN  ENGLAND 

SINGER  of  England's  ire  across  the  sea, 
Your  austere  voice,  electric  from  the  deep, 
Speaks  our  own  yearning,  and  our  spirits  sweep 
To  Europe's  allied  honor.  —  Painfully, 
Bowed  with  a  planet's  lonely  burden,  we 
Held  our  hot  hearts  in  leash,  but  now  they  leap 
Their  ban,  like  young  hounds  belling  from  their  keep, 
To  bait  the  Teuton  wolf  of  tyranny. 

What !    Would  he  throw  us  sops  of  sugared  art 
And  poisoned  commerce,  snarling :    "  So !   lie  still 
Till  I  have  shown  my  fangs,  and  torn  the  heart 
Of  half  the  world,  and  gorged  my  sanguine  fill ! "  — 
Now,  England,  let  him  see :   Rage  as  he  will, 

He  cannot  tear  our  plighted  souls  apart. 

29 


30  THE    PRESENT   HOUR 

II 
AMERICAN  NEUTRALITY 

How  shall  we  keep  an  armed  neutrality 
With  our  own  souls  ?     Our  souls  belie  our  lips, 
That  seek  to  hold  our  passion  in  eclipse 
And  hide  the  wound  of  our  sharp  sympathy, 
Saying:    "One's  neighbor  differs;   he  might  be 
Kindled  to  wrath,  were  one  to  wield  the  whips 
Of  truth."  —  Great  God  I    A  red  Apocalypse 
Flames  on  the  blinded  world :   and  what  do  we  ? 

Peace !   do  we  cry  ?    Peace  is  the  godlike  plan 

We  love  and  dedicate  our  children  to; 

Yet  England's  cause  is  ours :   The  rights  of  man, 

Which  little  Belgium  battles  for  anew, 

Shall  we  recant  ?     No !  —  Being  American, 

Our  souls  cannot  keep  neutral  and  keep  true. 


THE   CONFLICT  31 

III 
PEACE 

PEACE  !  —  But  there  is  no  peace.     To  hug  the  thought 

Is  but  to  clasp  a  lover  who  thinks  lies. 

Go :   look  your  earnest  neighbor  in  the  eyes 

And  read  the  answer  there.     Peace  is  not  bought 

By  distance  from  the  fight.     Peace  must  be  fought 

And  bled  for :   'tis  a  dream  whose  horrid  price 

Is  haggled  for  by  dread  realities; 

Peace  is  not  paid  till  dreamers  are  distraught. 

Would  we  not  close  our  ears  against  these  ills, 
Urging  our  hearts  :    "  Be  calm !     America 
Is  called  upon  to  rebuild  a  world/'  —  But  ah ! 
How  shall  we  nobly  build  with  neutral  wills? 
Can  we  be  calm  while  Belgian  anguish  shrills? 
Or  would  we  crown  with  peace  —  Caligula  ? 


32  THE    PRESENT    HOUR 

IV 
WILSON 

PATIENCE  —  but  peace  of  heart  we  cannot  choose ; 
Nor  would  he  wish  us  cravenly  to  keep 
Aloof  in  soul,  who  —  large  in  statesmanship 
And  justice  —  sent  our  ships  to  Vera  Cruz. 
Patience  must  wring  our  hearts,  while  we  refuse 
To  launch  our  country  on  that  crimson  deep 
Which  breaks  the  dikes  of  Europe,  but  we  sleep 
Watchful,  still  waiting  by  the  awful  fuse. 

Wisdom  he  counsels,  and  he  counsels  well 
Whose  patient  fortitude  against  the  fret 
And  sneer  of  time  has  stood  inviolable. 
We  love  his  goodness  and  will  not  forget. 
With  him  we  pause  beside  the  mouth  of  hell :  — 
The  wolf  of  Europe  has  not  triumphed  yet. 


THE    CONFLICT  33 

V 
KRUPPISM 

CROWNED  on  the  twilight  battlefield,  there  bends 
A  crooked  iron  dwarf,  and  delves  for  gold, 
Chuckling :  "  One  hundred  thousand  gatlings  —  sold ! " 
And  the  moon  rises,  and  a  moaning  rends 
The  mangled  living,  and  the  dead  distends, 
And  a  child  cowers  on  the  chartless  wold, 
Where,  searching  in  his  safety-vault  of  mold, 
The  kobold  kaiser  cuts  his  dividends. 

We,  who  still  wage  his  battles,  are  his  thralls 
And  dying  do  him  homage ;   yea,  and  give 
Daily  our  living  souls  to  be  enticed 
Into  his  power.     So  long  as  on  war's  walls 
We  build  engines  of  death  that  he  may  live, 
So  long  shall  we  serve  Krupp  instead  of  Christ. 


34  THE    PRESENT    HOUR 

VI 
THE  REAL  GERMANY 

BISMARCK  —  or  rapt  Beethoven  with  his  dreams  : 

Ah,  which  was  blind  ?     Or  which  bespoke  his  race  ?  - 

That  breed  which  nurtured  Heine's  haunting  -grace, 

And  Goethe,  mastering  Olympic  themes 

Of  meditation,  Mozart's  golden  gleams, 

And  Leibnitz  charting  realms  of  time  and  space, 

Great-hearted  Schiller,  and  that  fairy  brace 

Of  brothers  who  first  trailed  the  goblin  streams. 

Bismarck  for  these  builded  an  iron  tomb, 

And  clanged  the  door,  and  turned  a  kaiser's  key; 

And  simple  folk,  that  once  danced  merrily 

Their  May-ring  rites,  march  now  in  roaring  gloom 

Toward  that  renascent  dawn  when  the  black  womb 

Of  buried  guns  gives  birth  to  Germany. 


THE  LADS  OF  LIEGE 

["  Horum  omnium  fortissimi  sunt  Belgce."  —  CAESAR'S 
"  Commentaries  "] 

THE  lads  of  Liege,  beyond  our  eyes 
They  lie  where  beauty's  laurels  be  — 
With  lads  of  old  Thermopylae, 

Who  stayed  the  storming  Persians. 

The  lads  of  Liege,  on  glory's  field 
They  clasp  the  hands  of  Roland's  men, 
Who  lonely  faced  the  Saracen 
Meeting  the  dark  invasion. 

The  lads  —  the  deathless  lads  of  Liege, 
They  blazon  through  our  living  world 
Their  land  —  the  little  land  that  hurled 

Olympian  defiance. 
35 


36  THE    PRESENT   HOUR 

"Now  make  us  room,  now  let  us  pass; 
Our  monarch  suffers  no  delay. 
To  stand  in  mighty  Caesar's  way 
Beseems  not  Lilliputians." 

"  We  make  no  room ;   you  shall  not  pass, 
For  freedom  says  your  monarch  nay  I 
And  we  have  stood  in  Caesar's  way 
Through  freedom's  generations. 

"And  here  we  stand  till  freedom  fall 
And  Caesar  cry,  ere  we  succumb, 
Once  more  his  horum  omnium 
Fortissimi  sunt  Beiges. " 

The  monarch  roars  an  iron  laugh 
And  cries  on  God  to  man  his  guns; 
But  Belgian  mothers  bore  them  sons 
Who  man  the  souls  within  them : 


THE    LADS    OF    LIEGE  37 

They  bar  his  path,  they  hold  their  pass, 
They  blaze  in  glory  of  the  Gaul 
Till  Caesar  cries  again  "Of  all 
The  bravest  are  the  Belgians!" 

O  lads  of  Liege,  brave  lads  of  Liege, 
Your  souls  through  glad  Elysium 
Go  chanting:    horum  omnium 
Fortissimi  sunt  Beiges! 


CARNAGE:  Six  SONNETS 
[September,  1914] 

I 

DOUBT 

So  thin,  so  frail  the  opalescent  ice 
Where  yesterday,  in  lordly  pageant,  rose 
The  monumental  nations  —  the  repose 
Of  continents  at  peace!    Realities 
Solid  as  earth  they  seemed ;    yet  in  a  trice 
Their  bastions  crumbled  in  the  surging  floes 
Of  unconceivable,  inhuman  woes, 
Gulfed  in  a  mad,  unmeaning  sacrifice. 

We,  who  survive  that  world-quake,  cower  and  start, 
Searching  our  hidden  souls  with  dark  surmise : 
So  thin,  so  frail  — is  reason?    Patient  art  — 
Is  it  all  a  mockery,  and  love  all  lies? 
Who  sees  the  lurking  Hun  in  childhood's  eyes? 

Is  hell  so  near  to  every  human  heart? 
38 


CARNAGE  39 


II 
THE  GREAT  NEGATION 

WHEN  that  great-minded  man,  Sir  Edward  Grey, 

Said  to  the  hypocritic  'prince  of  peace': 

"Let  us  confer,  who  hold  the  destinies 

Of  Europe,  ere  the  tempest  breaks,  and  stay 

Its  carnage  I"   the  proud  despot  answered  nay, 

And  by  that  great  negation  loosed  the  seas 

And  winds  of  multitudinous  miseries 

To  rage  around  his  empire  for  their  prey. 

He  might  have  uttered  "Peace":   Peace  would  have 

been. 

He  might  have  abdicated  ere  he  fought 
For  such  Satanic  empire;    but  to  win 
Power  he  refused.     Therefore  a  rankling  thought 
Festers  henceforth  with  that  refusal's  sin :  — 
He  might  have  saved  the  world,  and  he  would  not. 


40  THE   PRESENT   HOUR 

III 
LOUVAIN 

SERENE  in  beauty's  olden  lineage, 

Calm  as  the  star  that  hears  the  Angelus  toll, 

Louvain  —  the  scholar's  crypt,  the  artist's  goal, 

The  cloistral  shrine  of  hallowed  pilgrimage 

Rapt  in  the  dreams  of  many  an  ardent  age, 

Louvain,  the  guileless  city  of  man's  soul, 

Is  blotted  from  the  world  —  a  bloodied  scroll, 

Ravaged  to  sate  a  drunken  Teuton's  rage. 

His  lust  shall  have  its  laurel.     That  red  sword 
He  ravished  with,  Time's  angel  shall  again 
Grasp  to  sere  him,  and  deify  him  Lord 
Of  Infamy;    yea,  brand  him  with  its  stain 
Naked  in  night,  abhorrent  and  abhorr'd, 
Where  the  dead  hail  him  William  of  Louvain  ! 


CARNAGE  41 


IV 
RHEIMS 

APOLLO  mourns  another  Parthenon 

In  ruins  !  —  Is  the  God  of  Love  awake  ? 

And  we  —  must  we  behold  the  world's  heart  break 

For  peace  and  beauty  ravished,  and  look  on 

Dispassionate  ?  —  Rheims'  gloried  fane  is  gone : 

Not  by  a  planet's  rupture,  nor  the  quake 

Of  subterranean  titans,  but  to  slake 

The  vengeance  of  a  Goth  Napoleon. 

O  Time,  let  not  the  anguish  numb  or  pall 

Of  that  remembrance !     Let  no  callous  heal 

Our  world-wound,  till  our  kindled  pities  call 

The  parliament  of  nations,  and  repeal 

The  vows  of  war.     Till  then,  pain  keep  us  thrall! 

More  bitter  than  to  battle  —  is  to  feel. 


42  THE   PRESENT   HOUR 

V 

KULTUR 

IF  men  must  murder,  pillage,  sack,  despoil, 
Let  it  not  be  (lest  angels  laugh)  in  the  name 
Of  sacred  Culture.     Vulcan  still  goes  lame 
Though  servile  Muses  poultice  him  with  oil 
Of  sleek  Hypocrisy.     They  waste  their  toil 
Whose  boast  of  light  and  sweetness  takes  its  claim 
From  deeds  of  night  and  wormwood,  which  defame 
Fair  Culture's  shrine  and  make  her  gods  recoil. 

No;    let  the  imperial  Visigoth  put  off 

His  borrowed  toga,  boast  aloud  his  slain 

In  naked  savagery,  and  make  his  scoff 

Of  Attic  graces.      So  when  once  again 

He  asks  for  Culture's  crown,  'twill  be  enough 

To  answer  him  :   Once  Rheims  was  —  and  Louvain  I 


CARNAGE  43 


VI 
DESTINY 

WE  are  what  we  imagine,  and  our  deeds 
Are  born  of  dreaming.     Europe  acts  to-day 
Epics  that  little  children  in  their  play 
Conjured,  and  statesmen  murmured  in  their  creeds; 
In  barrack,  court  and  school  were  sown  those  seeds, 
Like  Dragon's  teeth,  which  ripen  to  affray 
Their  sowers.     Dreams  of  slaughter  rise  to  slay, 
And  fate  itself  is  stuff  that  fancy  breeds. 

Mock,  then,  no  more  at  dreaming,  lest  our  own 

Create  for  us  a  like  reality ! 

Let  not  imagination's  soil  be  sown 

With  armed  men  but  justice,  so  that  we 

May  for  a  world  of  tyranny  atone 

And  dream  from  that  despair  —  democracy. 


THE   MUFFLED  DRUMS 

FOR  brothers  laid  in  blood, 

For  lovers  sundered, 
Defeated  motherhood 

And  manhood  plundered  — 
We  moan,  moan  the  faith  of  man  forgotten. 

For  human  vision  bleared 

And  childhood  bleeding, 
For  ripening  harvests  sered 

Before  the  seeding  — 
We  mourn,  mourn  the  beauty  unbegotten. 

We  were  the  wanton  ones 

In  old  wines  sunken, 
Who  sent  the  nations'  sons 

Forth,  reeling  drunken 

With  blare  and  rhythm  of  war's  ruthless  glory. 

44 


THE    MUFFLED    DRUMS  45 

Now  in  our  pulse  no  more 

The  old  wines  quicken, 
For  the  bannered  glory  of  war 

Trails  draggled  and  stricken, 

And  the  blood-red  beast  crawls  home,  blinded  and 
hoary : 

But  we  are  the  beating  hearts 

Of  women,  whose  yearning 
Shall  harass  the  beast  with  darts 

Of  their  myriad  burning 
Till  the  Angel  of  God  remould  him  —  an  image  human. 

Yea,  we  are  the  chanting  wills 

Of  women,  whose  sorrow 
Rebels  at  the  age-borne  ills 

Of  a  man-built  morrow, 
And  we  chant,  chant  the  world  redeemed  by  Woman. 


ANTWERP * 

TOWERS  —  eternal  towers  against  the  sky : 
Dawn-touched,  noon-flamed,  night-mantled  and  moon- 
flecked  ! 

The  tenuous  dreams  of  man,  the  architect, 
Imagining  in  stone  what  may  not  die 
Though  man,  the  anarchist,  dream  enginery 
For  its  destruction :   towers  of  intellect, 
Towers  of  aspiration  —  torn  and  wrecked, 
Profaned  by  robber  sacrilege :   ah,  why  ? 

Reason  shall  ask,  and  answer  shall  be  given; 

Justice  shall  ask,  and  deal  to  those  insane 

Their  dark  asylums,  but  to  those  —  the  vain 

Of  lustful  power,  how  shall  their  souls  be  shriven  ?  — 

They  shall  be  raised  on  infamy's  renown 

And  from  their  towers  of  tyranny  hurled  down. 


1  See  note  at  end  of  volume. 
46 


MAGNA  CARTA 

MAGNA  CARTA  !  Magna  Carta ! 
English  brothers,  we  have  borne  it 
On  our  banners  down  the  ages.  — 
Who  shall  scorn  it  ? 
Bitter  fought-for,  blood-emblazoned 
With  the  fadeless  gules  of  freedom, 
Interbound  with  precious  pages  — 
English  brothers,  we  who  shrine  it 
In  our  common  heart  of  hearts, 
Think  you  we  can  see  a  monarch, 
Tyrant-sceptred,  sanguine-shod, 
Seek  to  rend  it  and  malign  it : 
We  whose  sires  made  him  sign  it  — 
Him  who  deemed  him  next  to  God  ! 
We  who  dreamed  our  world  forever 
Purged  and  rid 

Of  his  spectre  —  think  you,  brothers, 
47 


48  THE    PRESENT    HOUR 

We  can  watch  this  ghost,  resurgent, 
Sweep  his  servile  hordes  toward  England, 
And  stand  silent  ?  —  God  forbid ! 

Magna  Carta  !    Magna  Carta ! 
Brother  freemen,  we  who  bear  it 
Starward  —  shall  we  see  him  tear  it  ? 
Fool  or  frantic, 
Let  him  dare  it ! 
If  he  reach  across  the  Channel 
He  shall  touch  across  the  Atlantic :  — 
Scrolled  with  new  and  olden  annal, 
Bitter  fought-for,  blood-emblazoned 
With  the  fadeless  gules  of  freedom, 
We  will  hand  him  —  Magna  Carta ! 
Yea,  once  more  shall  make  him  sign  it 
Where  the  centuries  refine  it, 
Till  his  serfs,  who  now  malign  it, 
Are  made  sick  of  him,  and  free 
Even  as  we. 


MAGNA   CARTA  49 

So,  if  ghostly  through  the  sea-mist, 
You  behold  his  Mediaeval 
Falcon  face  peer  violating  — 
Lo,  with  quills  and  Magna  Carta 
(Sharpened  quills  and  Magna  Carta) 
In  a  little  mead  near  London, 
English  brothers,  we  are  waiting ! 


MEN  OF  CANADA 

MEN  of  Canada, 

Fellow  Americans, 
Proud  our  hearts  beat  for  you  over  the  border : 

Proud  of  the  fight  you  wage, 

Proud  of  your  valiant  youth 
Sailing  to  battle  for  freedom  and  order. 

On  our  own  battlefields 
Many's  the  bout  we  had  — 

Yankee,  Canadian,  redcoat  and  ranger; 
But  our  old  brotherhood, 
Staunch  through  the  centuries, 

Shouts  in  our  blood  now  to  share  in  your  danger. 

Ah,  it's  a  wea,ry  thing 
Waiting  and  watching  here, 
Numbing  ourselves  to  a  frozen  neutrality: 
Yet,  in  a  world  at  war, 
'Tis  our  good  part  to  keep 

Patient  to  forge  the  strong  peace  of  finality. 

50 


MEN    OF    CANADA  51 

Though,  then,  our  part  be  Peace, 

Yet  our  free  fighting  souls 
League  with  your  own  'gainst  the  world-lust  of  Vandals ; 

Yea,  in  the  dreadful  night, 

We,  with  your  women,  weep 
And  for  your  shroudless  dead  burn  our  shrine  candles. 

So,  by  the  gunless  law 

Of  our  sane  borderline, 
By  our  souls'  faith,  that  no  border  can  sever, 

Freedom  !  —  now  may  your  fight, 

Waging  the  death  of  war, 
Silence  the  demons  of  cannon  forever ! 

Kin-folk  of  Canada, 

So  may  your  allied  arms' 
Smite  with  his  legions  the  Lord  of  Disorder ! 

God  speed  your  noble  cause  ! 

God  save  your  gallant  sons  ! 
Would  we  might  sail  with  them  —  over  the  border  I 


FRANCE 

HALF  artist  and  half  anchorite, 

Part  siren  and  part  Socrates, 
Her  face  —  alluring  fair,  yet  recondite  — 

Smiled  through  her  salons  and  academies. 

Lightly  she  wore  her  double  mask, 
Till  sudden,  at  war's  kindling  spark, 

Her  inmost  self,  in  shining  mail  and  casque, 
Blazed  to  the  world  her  single  soul  —  Jeanne  d'  Arc 


52 


HAUPTMANN 

JEAN  CHRISTOPHE  called  to  him  out  of  the  night  — 
Out  of  the  storm  and  dark  of  Europe's  hate, 
Crying :  "  Where  art  thou,  Hauptmann,  who  so  late 
Loomed  as  a  rugged  tower  of  human  right  ? 
Flame  to  the  world  thy  lonely  beacon-light 
Of  love  for  alien  hearths  laid  desolate  ! "  — 
In  answer  rolled  a  voice  infuriate 
Hoarse  with  the  fog  of  racial  scorn  and  spite : 

"  Here  am  I !  —  Let  them  perish  1 "     And  hell  laughed 
To  hear  that  voice  —  which  once  was  wont  to  soar 
With  Hannele  to  heaven,  and  starward  waft 
The  souls  of  simple  weavers  —  rasp  with  war ; 
Yea,  laughed  to  watch  that  tower's  heroic  shaft 
Fall  crumbling  on  the  beaconless  world  shore. 


53 


NIETZSCHE 

SOME  worshipped  and  some  bantered,  when 
The  prophets  of  the  drawing  room 
Gossiped  of  Jesus  Christ  his  doom 

Under  the  reign  of  Supermen, 

And  how  the  Christian  world  would  quake 

To  hear  what  Zarathustra  spake. 

Lo,  Zarathustra's  voice  has  spoken : 
And  they,  who  use  a  mad  bard's  song 
To  vindicate  a  tyrant's  wrong, 

Point  to  the  staring  dead  for  token 

Of  their  triumphant  creed,  enshrined 

In  temples  of  the  Teuton  mind. 

The  raving  dog-star  hath  his  season : 
But  when  the  light  beyond  our  death 
Leads  back  again  from  Nazareth 

The  holy  star  of  human  reason  — 

Then  will  philosophy  no  more 

Be  servile  to  the  Muse  of  War. 
54 


THE  CHILD-DANCERS1 

A  bomb  has  fallen  over  Notre  Dame : 
Germans  have  burned  another  Belgian  town: 
Russians  quelled  in  the  east:   England  in  qualm: 

I  closed  my  eyes,  and  laid  the  paper  down. 

Gray  ledge  and  moor-grass  and  pale  bloom  of  light 

By  pale  blue  seas ! 

What  laughter  of  a  child  world-sprite, 

Sweet  as  the  horns  of  lone  October  bees, 

Shrills  the  faint  shore  with  mellow,  old  delight? 

What  elves  are  these 

In  smocks  gray-blue  as  sea  and  ledge, 

Dancing  upon  the  silvered  edge 

Of  darkness  —  each  ecstatic  one 

Making  a  happy  orison, 

With  shining  limbs,  to  the  low-sunken  sun  ?  — 

1  At  end  of  volume  see  note. 
55 


56  THE    PRESENT    HOUR 

See:  now  they  cease 

Like  nesting  birds  from  flight: 

Demure  and  debonair 

They  troop  beside  their  hostess'  chair 

To  make  their  bedtime  courtesies : 

"  Spokoinoi  notchi  !  —  Gute  Nacht ! 

Bon  soir!    Bon  soir!  —  Good  night!" 
What  far-gleaned  lives  are  these 
Linked  in  one  holy  family  of  art  ?  — 
Dreams :    dreams  once  Christ  and  Plato  dreamed 
How  fair  their  happy  shades  depart! 

Dear  God!    how  simple  it  all  seemed, 
Till  once  again 

Before  my  eyes  the  red  type  quivered:    Slain: 
Ten  thousand  of  the  enemy.  — 
Then  laughter!    laughter  from  the  ancient  sea 
Sang  in  the  gloaming:    Athens!    Galilee! 
And  elfin  voices  called  from  the  extinguished  light : 
"  Spokoinoi  notchi  !  —  Gute  Nacht ! 
Bon  soir!    Bon  soir!  —  Good  night!" 


BATTLEFIELDS 

ON  the  battlefields  of  birth, 
Lulled  from  pain  in  twilight  sleep, 

Languorous  in  calm  reliance 

On  the  Christ-like  soul  of  science, 
They  whose  patient  soldiership 
Bore  the  age-old  pangs  of  earth 
Till  the  patient  seers  of  reason  set  them  free  — 

Volunteers,  whose  valiant  warring 

Is  the  passion  of  restoring  — 
Mothers,  gentle  mothers,  bless  you,  Germany ! 

By  the  battlefields  of  death, 
Racked  by  prayers  that  never  sleep, 

Anguished  with  a  wild  defiance 

Of  the  Satan  powers  of  science, 
They  whose  loving  guardianship 
Knit  the  subtle  bonds  of  breath 
Till  their  sons  of  iron  tore  them  ruthlessly  — 

Victims,  whose  heart-blinding  portion 

Is  their  victory's  abortion  — 

Mothers,  maddened  mothers,  curse  you,  Germany  I 
57 


IN  MEMORIAM 
MRS.  WOODROW  WILSON 

HER  gentle  spirit  passed  with  Peace  — 
With  Peace  out  of  a  world  at  war 

Racked  by  the  old  earth-agonies 
Of  kaiser,  king  and  czar, 

Where  Bear  and  Lion  crouch  in  lair 
To  rend  the  iron  Eagle's  flesh 

And  viewless  engines  of  the  air 
Spin  wide  their  lightning  mesh, 

And  darkly  kaiser,  czar  and  king 

With  awful  thunders  stalk  their  prey.  — 

Yet  Peace,  that  moves  with  silent  wing, 
Is  mightier  than  they. 

And  she  —  our  lady  who  has  passed  — 

And  Peace  were  sisters :    They  are  gone 
Together  through  time's  holocaust 

To  blaze  a  bloodless  dawn. 
58 


INMEMORIAM  59 

How  otherwise  the  royal  die 

Whose  power  is  throned  on  rolling  drums ! 
Her  monument  of  royalty 

Is  builded  in  the  slums : 

Her  latest  prayer,  transformed  to  law, 
Shall  more  than  monarch's  vow  endure, 

Assuaging  there,  with  loving  awe, 
The  anguish  of  the  poor. 


A  PRAYER  OF  THE  PEOPLES 

GOD  of  us  who  kill  our  kind  I 
Master  of  this  blood-tracked  Mind 
Which  from  wolf  and  Caliban 
Staggers  toward  the  star  of  Man  — 
Now,  on  Thy  cathedral  stair, 
God,  we  cry  to  Thee  in  prayer! 

Where  our  stifled  anguish  bleeds 
Strangling  through  Thine  organ  reeds, 
Where  our  voiceless  songs  suspire 
From  the  corpses  in  Thy  choir  — 
Through  Thy  charred  and  shattered  nave, 
God,  we  cry  on  Thee  to  save! 

Save  us  from  our  tribal  gods ! 

From  the  racial  powers,  whose  rods  — 
60 


A    PRAYER   OF   THE    PEOPLES      61 

Wreathed  with  stinging  serpents  —  stir 
Odin  and  old  Jupiter 
From  their  ancient  hells  of  hate 
To  invade  Thy  dawning  state. 

Save  us  from  their  curse  of  kings! 
Free  our  souls'  imaginings 
From  the  feudal  dreams  of  war; 
Yea,  God,  let  us  nevermore 
Make,  with  slaves'  idolatry, 
Kaiser,  king  or  czar  of  Thee! 

We  who,  craven  in  our  prayer, 
Would  lay  off  on  Thee  our  care  — 
Lay  instead  on  us  Thy  load; 
On  our  minds  Thy  spirit's  goad, 
On  our  laggard  wills  Thy  whips 
And  Thy  passion  on  our  lips! 

Fill  us  with  the  reasoned  faith 
That  the  prophet  lies,  who  saith 


62  THE    PRESENT    HOUR 

All  this  web  of  destiny, 
Torn  and  tangled,  cannot  be 
Newly  wove  and  redesigned 
By  the  Godward  human  mind. 

Teach  us,  so,  no  more  to  call 

Guidance  supernatural 

To  our  help,  but  —  heart  and  will  — 

Know  ourselves  responsible 

For  our  world  of  wasted  good 

And  our  blinded  brotherhood. 

Lord,  our  God!    to  whom,  from  clay, 

Blood  and  mire,  Thy  peoples  pray  — 

Not  from  Thy  cathedral's  stair 

Thou  hearest :  —  Thou  criest  through  our  prayer 

For  our  prayer  is  but  the  gate: 

We,  who  pray,  ourselves  are  fate. 


THE  PRESENT  HOUR 

II 
PEACE 


PANAMA  HYMN 

LORD  of  the  sundering  land  and  deep, 
For  whom  of  old,  to  suage  thy  wrath, 

The  floods  stood  upright  as  a  heap 
To  shape  thy  host  a  dry-shod  path, 

Lo,  now,  from  tide  to  sundered  tide 
Thy  hand,  outstretched  in  glad  release, 

Hath  torn  the  eternal  hills  aside 
To  blaze  a  liquid  path  for  Peace. 

Thy  hand,  englaived  in  flaming  steel, 
Hath  clutched  the  demons  of  the  soil 

And  made  their  forge-fires  roar  and  reel 
To  serve  thy  seraphim  in  toil; 

While  round  their  pits  the  nations,  bowed, 

Have  watched  thine  awful  enginery 
Compel,  through  thunderbolt  and  cloud, 

The  demigods  to  slave  for  thee. 
F  65 


66  THE    PRESENT    HOUR 

For  thee  hath  glaring  Cyclops  sweat, 
And  Atlas  groaned,  and  Hercules 

For  thee  his  iron  sinews  set, 

And  thou  wast  lord  of  Rameses; 

Till  now  they  pause,  to  watch  thy  hand 
Lead  forth  the  first  leviathan 

Through  mazes  of  the  jungled  land, 
Submissive  to  the  will  of  man : 

Submissive  through  the  will  of  us 

To  thine,  the  universal  will, 
That  leads,  divine  and  devious, 

To  world-communions  vaster  still.  — 

The  titans  rest;    intense,  aware, 
The  host  of  nations  dumbly  waits; 

The  mountains  lift  their  brows  and  stare; 
The  tides  are  knocking  at  the  gates. 


PANAMA   HYMN  67 

Almighty  of  the  human  mind, 

Unlock  the  portals  of  our  sleep 
That  lead  to  visions  of  our  kind, 

And  marry  sundered  deep  to  deep ! 


GOETHALS 

A  MAN  went  down  to  Panama 

Where  many  a  man  had  died 
To  slit  the  sliding  mountains 

And  lift  the  eternal  tide: 
A  man  stood  up  in  Panama, 

And  the  mountains  stood  aside. 

The  Power  that  wrought  the  tide  and  peak 

Wrought  mightier  the  seer; 
And  the  One  who  made  the  isthmus 

He  made  the  engineer, 
And  the  good  God  he  made  Goethals 

To  cleave  the  hemisphere. 

The  reek  of  fevered  ages  rose 
From  poisoned  jungle  and  strand, 

Where  the  crumbling  wrecks  of  failure 
Lay  sunk  in  the  torrid  sand  — 

Derelicts  of  old  desperate  hopes 

And  venal  contraband : 
68 


GOETHALS  69 


Till  a  mind  glowed  white  through  the  yellow  mist 

And  purged  the  poison-mold, 
And  the  wrecks  rose  up  in  labor, 

And  the  fevers'  knell  was  tolled, 
And  the  keen  mind  cut  the  world-divide, 

Untarnished  by  world  gold: 

For  a  poet  wrought  in  Panama 

With  a  continent  for  his  theme, 
And  he  wrote  with  flood  and  fire 

To  forge  a  planet's  dream, 
And  the  derricks  rang  his  dithyrambs 

And  his  stanzas  roared  in  steam. 

But  the  poet's  mind  it  is  not  his 

Alone,  but  a  million  men's : 
Far  visions  of  lonely  dreamers 

Meet  there  as  in  a  lens, 
And  lightnings,  pent  by  stormy  time, 

Leap  through,  with  flame  intense: 


70  THE    PRESENT    HOUR 

So  from  our  age  three  giants  loom 
To  vouch  man's  venturous  soul : 

Amundsen  on  his  ice-peak, 
And  Peary  from  his  pole, 

And  midway,  where  the  oceans  meet, 
Goethals  —  beside  his  goal : 

Where  old  Balboa  bent  his  gaze 

He  leads  the  liners  through, 
And  the  Horn  that  tossed  Magellan 

Bellows  a  far  halloo, 
For  where  the  navies  never  sailed 

Steamed  Goethals  and  his  crew; 

So  nevermore  the  tropic  routes 

Need  poleward  warp  and  veer, 
But  on  through  the  Gates  of  Goethals 

The  steady  keels  shall  steer, 
Where  the  tribes  of  man  are  led  toward  peace 

By  the  prophet-engineer. 


A  CHILD  AT  THE  WICKET 

A  LITTLE  isle :    it  is  for  some 
Hell's  gate,  for  some  Elysium !  — 
Round  Ellis  Isle  the  salt  waves  flow 
With  old-world  tears,. wept  long  ago; 

Round  Ellis  Isle  the  warm  waves  leap 
With  new-world  laughter  from  the  deep, 
And  centuries  of  sadness  smile 
To  clasp  their  arms  round  Ellis  Isle. 


I  watched  her  pass  the  crowded  piers, 
A  peasant  child  of  maiden  years; 
Her  face  was  toward  the  evening  sky 
Where  fair  Manhattan  towered  high; 

Her  yellow  kerchief  caught  the  breeze, 
Her  crimson  kirtle  flapped  her  knees, 
As  lithe  she  swayed  to  tug  the  band 

Of  swaddled  bundle  in  her  hand. 
71 


72  THE   PRESENT    HOUR 

From  her  right  hand  the  big  load  swung, 
But  with  her  left  strangely  she  clung 
To  something  light,  which  seemed  a  part 
Of  her,  and  held  it  'gainst  her  heart: 

A  something  frail,  which  tender  hands 
Had  touched  to  song  in  far-off  lands 
On  twilights,  when  the  looms  are  mute: 
A  thing  of  love  —  a  slender  lute. 

Hardly  she  seemed  to  know  she  held 
That  frail  thing  fast,  but  went  compelled 
By  wonder  of  the  dream  that  lay 
In  those  bright  towers  across  the  bay. 

A  staggering  load,  a  treasure  light  — 
She  bore  them  both,  and  passed  from  sight. 
From  Ellis  Isle  I  watched  her  pass : 
Pinned  on  her  breast  was  Lawrence,  Mass. 


A    CHILD    AT   THE    WICKET         73 

O  little  isle,  you  are  for  some 
Hell's  gate,  for  some  Elysium! 
Your  wicket  swings,  and  some  to  song 
Pass  on,  and  some  to  silent  wrong; 

But  who,  where  hearts  of  toilers  bleed 
In  songless  toil,  ah,  who  will  heed  — 
On  twilights,  when  the  looms  are  mute  — 
A  thing  of  love,  a  slender  lute? 


HYMN  FOR  EQUAL  SUFFRAGE 

THEY  have  strewn  the  burning  hearths  of  Man  with 

darkness  and  with  mire, 
They  have  heaped  the  burning  hearts  of  Man  with 

ashes  of  desire, 
Yet  from  out  those  hearts  and  hearths  still  leaps  the 

quick  eternal  fire 

Whose  flame  is  liberty. 

But  the  flame  which  once  led  deathward  all  the  dazzled 

fighting  hordes 
Lights  them  now  to  living  freedom  from  the  bondage 

of  their  lords, 
And  our  mothers  are  uprisen  'mid  their  sons  to  wrest 

the  swords 

From  hands  of  tyranny. 

For  the  freedom  of  the  laborer  is  freedom  from  his  toil, 
And  freedom  of  the  citizen  is  right  to  share  the  soil, 
And  the  freedom  of  our  country  is  our  loosing  of  the  coil 

That  chokes  posterity. 
74 


HYMN  FOR  EQUAL  SUFFRAGE  75 

So  we  who  wage  our  devious  wars,  in  fastness  and  in  fen, 
Let  us  claim  our  common  birthright  in  the  living  sun 

again, 
Till  the  battle  of  the  beasts  becomes  the  reasoning  of 

men, 

And  joy  our  destiny. 

Let  us  march  then,  all  together,  not  because  our  leaders 

call, 

But  at  summons  of  the  mighty  soul  of  man  within  us  all, 
Men  and  women,  equal  comrades,  let  us  storm  the 

nation's  wall 

And  cry  "Equality!" 

For  the  vote  that  brings  to  woman  and  to  man  life's 

common  bread, 
Is  mightier  than  the  mindless  gun  that  leaves  a  million 

dead; 
And  the  rights  of  Man  shall  triumph  where  once  men 

and  women  bled 

When  mothers  of  men  are  free. 


LEXINGTON 

"WHERE  is  the  little  town  of  Lexington? 

Oh,  I  have  lost  my  way ! "  — 
But  all  the  brawling  people  hurried  on: 

Why  should  they  stay 
To  watch  a  tattered  boy,  with  wistful  face, 
Dazed  by  the  roaring  strangeness  of  the  place  ?  — 

In  wondering  scorn 
Turning,  he  tapped  the  powder  from  his  powder-horn. 

"  Where  is  my  blood-bright  hearth  of  Lexington  ?  "  — 

Strangely  the  kindling  cry 
Startled  the  crowded  street;    yet  everyone 

Still  scrambled  by 

Into  the  shops  and  markets ;   till  at  last 
Went  by  a  pensive  scholar.     As  he  passed, 

Sudden,  to  whet 

Of  steel,  he  heard  a  flint-lock  flash  :  their  faces  met. 
76 


LEXINGTON  77 


"What  like,  then,  is  your  little  Lexington?" 

"Oh,  sir,  it  is  my  home, 
Which  I  have  lost." — The  scholar's  sharp  eyes  shone. 

"Come  with  me!     Come, 
And  I  will  show  you,  old  and  hallowed,  all 
Its  maps  and  marks  and  shafts  memorial."  — 

Out  of  the  roar 
They  went,  into  green  silence  where  old  elm  trees  soar. 

"  Here  is  your  little  town  of  Lexington : 

Let  fall  your  eyes 
And  read  the  old  inscription  on  this  stone : 

'Beneath  this  lies 

The  first  who  fell  in  our  dear  country's  fight 
For  revolution  and  the  freeman's  right.'" 

The  boy's  eyes  fell, 
But  shining  swiftly  rose :    "  Yes,  I  remember  well ! 

"  Yet  there  lies  not  my  lost  home  Lexington : 
For  none  who  fall 


78  THE    PRESENT    HOUR 

At  Lexington  is  buried  under  stone; 

And  eyes  of  all 

Who  fight  at  Lexington  look  up  at  God 
Not  down  upon  His  servants  under  sod 

Whose  souls  are  sped ; 
They  lie  who  say  in  Lexington  free  men  are  dead." 

"My  son,  I  said  not  so  of  Lexington. 

'There  lie  the  bones/ 
I  said,  'of  great  men,  and  their  souls  are  gone/ 

God  sends  but  once 

His  lightning-flash  to  strike  the  sacred  spot. 
Our  great  sires  are  departed."  —  "They  are  not! 

I  am  alive. 
/  fought  at  Lexington ;   you  see,  I  still  survive ! 

"And  still  I  live  to  fight  at  Lexington. 

I  am  come  far 
From  Russian  steppes  and  Balkan  valleys,  wan 

With  ghostly  war, 


LEXINGTON  79 

Where  still  the  holy  watchword  in  the  fight 
Was  Revolution  and  the  freeman's  right !  — 

Now  I  am  come 
Back  with  that  battle-cry  to  help  my  own  dear  home. 


"  Here,  here  it  lies  —  my  lost  home  Lexington  ! 

Not  there  in  dust, 
But  here  in  the  great  highway  of  the  sun, 

Where  still  the  lust 

Of  arrogant  power  flaunts  its  regiments, 
And  lurking  hosts  of  tyranny  pitch  their  tents, 

And  still  the  yoke 
Of  heavy-laden  labor  weighs  on  simple  folk. 


"  Our  country  cries  for  living  Lexington ! 

From  mine  and  slum 
And  hearths  where  man's  rebellion  still  burns  on, 

Rolls  the  deep  drum : 


80  THE    PRESENT    HOUR 

Ah,  not  to  elegize  but  emulate 

Is  homage  worthy  of  the  heroic  great, 

Whose  memoried  spot 
Serves  but  to  quicken  fire  from  ashes  long  forgot. 

"Here,  then,  O  little  town  of  Lexington, 

Burnish  anew 
Our  muskets  for  the  battle  long  begun 

For  freedom  !  —  You, 

O  you,  my  comrades,  called  from  all  world-clans, 
Here,  by  the  deeds  of  dear  Americans 

That  cannot  die, 
Let  Lexington  be  still  our  revolution-cry!" 


SCHOOL 
I 

OLD  Hezekiah  leaned  hard  on  his  hoe 

And  squinted  long  at  Eben,  his  lank  son.  — 

The  silence  shrilled  with  crickets.     Day  was  done, 

And,  row  on  dusky  row, 

Tall  bean  poles  ribbed  with  dark  the  gold-bright  after 
glow. 

Eben  stood  staring :   ever,  one  by  one, 
The  tendril  tops  turned  ashen  as  they  flared. 

Still  Eben  stared. 

Oh,  there  is  wonder  on  New  Hampshire  hills, 
Hoeing  the  warm  bright  furrows  of  brown  earth, 
And  there  is  grandeur  in  the  stone  wall's  birth, 

And  in  the  sweat  that  spills 

From  rugged  toil  is  sweetness ;  yet  for  wild  young  wills 
There  is  no  dew  of  wonder,  but  stark  dearth, 
In  one  old  man  who  hoes  his  long  bean  rows, 

And  only  hoes. 

G  81 


82  THE    PRESENT    HOUR 

Old  Hezekiah  turned  slow  on  his  heel. 

He  touched  his  son.  —  Through  all  the  carking  day 

There  are  so  many  littlish  cares  to  weigh 

Large  natures  down,  and  steel 
The   heart   of   understanding.  —  "Son,   how   is't   ye 

feel? 

What  are  ye  starin'  on  —  a  gal?"     A  ray 
Flushed  Eben  from  the  fading  afterglow: 

He  dropped  his  hoe. 

He  dropped  his  hoe,  but  sudden  stooped  again 
And  raised  it  where  it  fell.  Nothing  he  spoke, 
But  bent  his  knee  and  crack!  the  handle  broke 

Splintering.     With  glare  of  pain, 
He  flung  the  pieces  down,  and  stamped  upon  them; 

then  — 

Like  one  who  leaps  out  naked  from  his  cloak  — 
Ran.  —  "  Here,  come  back  !     Where  are  ye  bound  — 

you  fool?" 
He  cried —  "To  school!" 


SCHOOL  83 


II 

Now  on  the  mountain  Morning  laughed  with  light  — 
With  light  and  all  the  future  in  her  face, 
For  there  she  looked  on  many  a  far-off  place 

And  wild  adventurous  sight, 
For  which  the  mad  young  autumn  wind  hallooed  with 

might 

And  dared  the  roaring  mill-brook  to  the  race, 
Where  blue-jays  screamed  beyond  the  pine-dark  pool  — 

"To  school!  — To  school!" 

Blackcoated,  Eben  took  the  barefoot  trail, 

Holding  with  wary  hand  his  Sunday  boots; 

Harsh  catbirds  mocked  his  whistling  with  their  hoots ; 

Under  his  swallowtail 

Against  his  hip-strap  bumping,  clinked  his  dinner  pail ; 
Frost  maples  flamed,  lone  thrushes  touched  their  lutes ; 
Gray  squirrels  bobbed,  with  tails  stiff  curved  to  backs, 

To  eye  his  tracks. 


84  THE   PRESENT   HOUR 

Soon  at  the  lonely  crossroads  he  passed  by 
The  little  one-room  schoolhouse.     He  peered  in. 
There  stood  the  bench  where  he  had  often  been 

Admonished  flagrantly 

To  drone  his  numbers :     Now  to  this  he  said  good 
bye 

For  mightier  lure  of  more  romantic  scene : 
Goodbye  to  childish  rule  and  homely  chore 

Forevermore ! 

All  day  he  hastened  like  the  flying  cloud 
Breathless  above  him,  big  with  dreams,  yet  dumb. 
With    tightened    jaw    he    chewed    the    tart    spruce 
gum, 

And  muttered  half  aloud 
Huge  oracles.     At  last,  where  through  the  pine-tops 

bowed 

The  sun,  it  rose !  —  His  heart  beat  like  a  drum. 
There,  there  it  rose  —  his  tower  of  prophecy  : 

The  Academy! 


SCHOOL  85 


III 

They  learn  to  live  who  learn  to  contemplate, 

For  contemplation  is  the  imconfined 

God  who  creates  us.     To  the  growing  mind 

Freedom  to  think  is  fate, 
And  all  that  age  and  after-knowledge  augurate 
Lies  in  a  little  dream  of  youth  enshrined : 
That  dream  to  nourish  with  the  skilful  rule 

Of  love  —  is  school. 

Eben,  in  mystic  tumult  of  his  teens, 

Stood  bursting  —  like  a  ripe  seed  —  into  soul. 

All  his  life  long  he  had  watched  the  great  hills  roll 

Their  shadows,  tints  and  sheens 
By   sun-   and    moon-rise;    yet   the   bane   of   hoeing 

beans 

And  round  of  joyless  chores,  his  father's  toll, 
Blotted  their  beauty;   nature  was  as  not: 

He  had  never  thought. 


86  THE   PRESENT   HOUR 

But  now  he  climbed  his  boyhood's  castle  tower 
And  knocked :   Ah,  well  then  for  his  after-fate 
That  one  of  nature's  masters  opened  the  gate, 

Where  like  an  April  shower 
Live  influence  quickened  all  his  earth-blind  seed  to 

power. 

Strangely  his  sense  of  truth  grew  passionate, 
And  like  a  young  bull,  led  in  yoke  to  drink, 

He  bowed  to  think. 

There  also  bowed  their  heads  with  him  to  quaff  — 
The  snorting  herd !     And  many  a  wholesome  grip 
He  had  of  rivalry  and  fellowship. 

Often  the  game  was  rough, 

But  Eben  tossed  his  horns  and  never  called  it  off; 
For  still  through   play  and   task   his   Dream  would 

slip  — 
A  radiant  Herdsman,  guiding  destiny 

To  his  degree. 


SCHOOL  87 


IV 

Once  more  old  Hezekiah  stayed  his  hoe 
To  squint  at  Eben.     Silent,  Eben  scanned 
A  little  roll  of  sheepskin  in  his  hand, 

While,  row  on  dusky  row, 

Tall  bean  poles  ribbed  with  dark  the  gold-bright  after 
glow. 

The  boy  looked  up :   Here  was  another  land  I 
Mountain  and  farm  with  mystic  beauty  flared 

Where  Eben  stared. 

Stooping,  he  lifted  with  a  furtive  smile 

Two  splintered  sticks,  and  spliced  them.     Nevermore 

His  spirit  would  go  beastwise  to  his  chore 

Blinded,  for  even  while 

He  stooped  to  the  old  task,  sudden  in  the  sunset's  pile 
His  radiant  Herdsman  swung  a  fiery  door, 
Through  which  came  forth  with  far-borne  trumpetings 

Poets  and  kings, 


88  THE    PRESENT    HOUR 

His  fellow  conquerors :    There  Virgil  dreamed, 
There  Caesar  fought  and  won  the  barbarous  tribes, 
There  Darwin,  pensive,  bore  the  ignorant  gibes, 

And  One  with  thorns  redeemed 
From  malice  the  wild  hearts  of  men  :  there  flared  and 

gleamed 

With  chemic  fire  the  forges  of  old  scribes, 
Testing  anew  the  crucibles  of  toil 

To  save  God's  soil. 

So  Eben  turned  again  to  hoe  his  beans ; 

But  now,  to  ballads  which  his  Herdsman  sung, 

Henceforth  he  hoed  the  dream  in  with  the  dung, 

And  for  his  ancient  spleens 

Planting  new  joys,  imagination  found  him  means.  — 
At  last  old  Hezekiah  loosed  his  tongue : 
"  Well,  boy,  this  school  —  what  has  it  learned  ye  to 
know?" 

He  said:    "To  hoe." 


THE  PLAYER 

[Shakspere] 

His  wardrobe  is  the  world,  and  day  and  night 

His  many-mirror'd  dressing  room :   At  dawn 

He  apes  the  elvish  faun, 

Or,  garbed  in  saffron  hose  and  scarlet  shoon, 

Mimics  the  madcap  sprite 

Of  ever-altering  youth ;   at  chime  of  noon 

He  wears  the  azure  mail  and  blazoned  casque 

Of  warring  knighthood ;   till,  at  starry  stroke 

Of  dark,  all  pale  he  dons  his  "inky  cloak" 

And  meditates  —  the  waning  moon  his  tragic  mask. 

His  theatre  is  the  soul,  and  man  and  woman 
His  infinite  repertory :    Age  on  age, 
Treading  his  fancy's  stage, 
Ephemeral  shadows  of  his  master  mind, 
We  act  our  parts  —  the  human 

Players  of  scenes  long  since  by  him  designed; 

89 


90  THE    PRESENT   HOUR 

And  stars,  that  blaze  in  tinsel  on  our  boards, 

Shine  with  a  moment's  immortality 

Because  they  are  his  understudies,  free 

For  one  aspiring  hour  to  sound  his  magic  chords. 

For  not  with  scholars  and  their  brain-worn  scripts, 
Nor  there  behind  the  footlights'  fading  glow 
Shakspere  survives  :    ah,  no  I 
Deep  in  the  passionate  reality 
Of  raging  life  above  the  darkling  crypts 
Of  death,  he  meditates  the  awed  "To  be 
Or  not  to  be"  of  millions,  yet  to  whom 
His  name  is  nothing;   there,  on  countless  quests, 
Unlettered  Touchstones  quibble  with  his  jests, 
Unlaureled  Hamlets  yearn,  and  anguished  Lears  up- 
loom. 

Leave,  then,  to  Avon's  spire  and  silver  stream 
Their  memory  of  ashes  sung  and  sighed :     • 
Our  Shakspere  never  died, 


THE    PLAYER  91 

Nor  ever  was  born,  save  as  the  god  is  born 
From  every  soul  that  dares  to  doubt  and  dream. 
He  dreams  —  but  is  not  mortal :    eve  and  morn, 
Dirge  and  delight,  float  from  his  brow  like  prayer. 
Beside  him,  charmed  Apollo  lifts  his  lyre; 
Below,  the  heart  of  man  smoulders  in  fire; 
Between  the  two  he  stands,  timeless  —  the  poet-player. 


TO  JOSEPHINE  PRESTON  PEABODY 
(On  first  reading  her  play  "The  Wolf  of  Gubbio") 

CONJURESS,  here 

YouVe  poured,  all  clear, 

In  a  cup,  a  carven  crystal  cup  — 

Pied  with  lights  that  flush  and  falter 

And  flower  again  — 

All  in  a  three-rimmed  loving-cup 

Fit  for  the  dear  Madonna's  altar, 

Where  thieves  and  shrews  and  wolvish  men 

And  wondering  children  may  come  to  sup  — 

All  in  a  cup,  a  shining  cup, 

Held  by  the  trembling  paws  and  fingers 

Of  your  divine  dog  Fra  Lupone 

And  him,  his  crony, 

Whose  loving  laughter  lingers 

In  the  echo  of  song  that  bubbles  so  easy 

In  syllabling :    d'Assissi  !   d'Assissi  ! 
92 


JOSEPHINE   PRESTON    PEABODY     93 

Him,  large  white  soul  in  the  simple  wee  body  — 

Pulsing,  you've  poured  in  a  glowing  cup 

For  joy  of  our  generations  — 

Wine :   wine  distilled  from  the  art 

And  the  sheen 

Of  the  mind  and  the  heart 

Of  Josephine 

Preston  Peabody.  — 

Fair  befall  her!  —  Felicitations! 


PROLOGUE  AND  EPILOGUE  TO  A  BIRD 
MASQUE 

PROLOGUE 
Enter  FANTASY,  who  speaks : 

GENTLES,  just  now  I  met  an  elf 

Who  crooked  mid-air  his  finger  joint 

To  beckon  me,  poising  himself 

Sheer  on  a  shining  question-point; 

And  there  he  cried:  "Who  may  you  be? 

Where  are  you  bound,  if  one  may  ask? 

What  are  these  birds  that  hold  a  masque? 

What  is  a  masque?  What  witchery 

Can  cause  my  woodland  boughs  to  grace 

This  walled  and  crowded  shut-in  place? 

How  may  divine  Aurora  rise 

Under  a  roof  ?    That  parchment  scroll  — 

What's  written  there?"  — I  said:    "Replies 

To  elves  like  you,  who  claim  their  toll 

Of  answers."     So  I  cast  my  eyes 

Downward,  and  read  this  from  my  roll: 
94 


PROLOGUE  95 


I 

Follow  me,  Gentles !    Follow  me 

By  hidden  paths,  for  I  am  Fantasy :  — 

Between  the  ear  and  what  is  heard, 

Betwixt  the  eye  and  what  is  seen, 

Midway  the  poet  and  his  word 

I  hold  my  shadowy  demesne. 

And  there  to-night  I  act  a  thing  — 

Nor  drama  nor  lyric  but  mid-way  — 

Wrought  for  my  fairy  folk  to  sing 

And  real  folk  to  play. 

Your  nature  critic  does  not  ask 

Robin  to  nest  with  wren, 

Yet  both  are  birds :    Why  argue,  then, 

What  drama  is,  or  masque? 

My  theatre's  art  is  nature's,  when 

It  serves  the  creator's  task. 


96  THE    PRESENT    HOUR 

II 

Then,  follow  me,  Gentles,  if  you  will  I 

To  follow  means  but  tarry  still 

Here  in  your  seats,  for  I  will  bring 

Horizons  for  your  journeying, 

Till  soon  this  many-murmured  hall 

Shall  be  for  you  a  silent  wood, 

Where  we  may  watch,  through  leafy  solitude, 

Quercus  the  faun,  and  hear  his  echo  call 

In  sighing  surds 

The  vowel-bubbling  birds, 

And  spy  where  Dawn  steals  past  with  pale  footfall 

III 

Come,  then,  for  this  can  only  be 
If  you  will  follow  Fantasy. 
No  magic  is,  except  through  me; 
Yet  I  myself  can  nothing  do 
Alone;    my  radiance  'tis  from  you. 


PROLOGUE  97 


For  if  in  woods  I  walk  alone 

No  light  will  be  around  me  thrown; 

And  if  alone  you  walk  the  woods, 

Your  eyes  will  blink  through  darkening  hoods. 

IV 

Come,  then,  together  let  us  go, 

As  birds  and  men  together  meet 

Where  boughs  are  dim  and  woodlands  sweet 

With  meditation.     Meeting  so, 

My  simplest  arts 

Will  serve  to  please  you,  and  unblind 

Your  own  rapt  vision ;    for  kind  hearts 

Need  no  compulsion  to  be  kind 

To  their  own  natures.     So  the  mind 

Amongst  you  which  shall  act  most  feelingly 

My  simple  masque,  and  find  the  fewest  flaws, 

Shall  win  my  best  award,  and  he  (or  she) 

Be  showered  by  my  players'  glad  applause. 


98  THE    PRESENT    HOUR 

EPILOGUE 

Gentles,  if  you  have  followed  me, 
Now  is  no  need  to  say  goodbye; 
For  we  shall  meet  in  revery 
Wherever  glad  birds  sing  and  fly  — 
Wherever  sad  birds  bleed  and  dumbly  die. 

Oh,  where  they  mount  on  wings  and  song 
'Tis  we  who  mount  there  —  you  and  I ; 
And  where  they  fall  and  suffer  wrong 
'Tis  we  who  perish  —  you  and  I : 
Our  own  is  Ornis'  pain  or  ecstasy. 

So,  at  fresh  rise  and  set  of  sun, 

May  Ornis  bring  her  joy  to  you,  each  one, 

And  Tacita  her  dreams !  —  Our  masque  is  done. 


THE  SONG  SPARROW 

WHEN  June  was  cool  and  clover  long 
And  birds  were  glad  in  soul  and  body, 

I  sat  me  down  to  make  a  song, 
And  sweltered  in  my  study: 

I  swinked  and  sweat  with  weary  art 

To  tell  how  merry  was  my  heart. 

With  weary  art  and  wordy  choice 

I  toiled,  when  sudden  —  low  and  breezy 

I  heard  a  little  friendly  voice 
Call :    Simple,  simple,  so  easy  ! 

I  heard,  yet  sat  apart  in  dole 

To  sing  how  social  was  my  soul. 

In  vain !  —  That  artless  voice  went  round 

In  tiny  echoes  faint  and  teasy. 
I  rose:    "What  toil  then,  have  you  found 

Simple,  simple,  so  easy?" 
99 


100  THE   PRESENT   HOUR 

Dauntless,  the  bird,  with  dewy  beak, 
Carolled  again  his  cool  critique. 

Nay,  song  it  is  a  simple  thing 
For  hearts  that  seek  no  reason: 

Relentless  bird,  why  should  you  sing 
Who  are  the  happy  season  ?  — 

Still  why!    The  root  of  joy  I  seek, 

While  laughter  ripples  from  your  beak. 

No  wonder,  then,  the  bard's  pen  creaks, 
The  critic's  drone  grows  wheezy, 

When  joy  the  June  bird  never  seeks 
Is  simple,  simple,  so  easy! 

While  we,  who  find  our  art  so  long, 

Still  make  a  subterfuge  of  song! 


TO  AN  UPLAND  PLOVER 

CRESCENT-WING'D,  sky-clean 
Hermit  of  pastures  wild, 

Upland  plover,  shy-soul'd  lover 
Of  field  ways  undefiled! 
I  watch  your  curve-tipt  pinion  glean  — 
Slim  as  a  scythe  —  the  rusty  green 

Reaches  of  sweet-fern  cover 
That  slant  to  your  secret  glade, 
But  what  you  cull  with  your  rhythmic  blade 
What  mortal  can  discover? 

Azure-born,  gale-blown 
Gull  of  the  billowy  hills, 

My  heart  goes  forth  to  see  you  hover 
So  far  from  human  sills, 

To  hear  your  tweeting,  shrill  and  lone, 
101 


i'02         THE  PRESENT  HOUR 

Make  from  the  moorgrass  such  sharp  moan 

As  some  unshriven  lover, 
For  you  are  sorrow-wise 
With  memory,  whose  passions  rise 

Whence  no  man  may  discover. 

Reticent,  rare  of  song, 

Rears  the  shy  soul  its  pain : 

You  sought  no  cottage  eave  as  cover 
To  dole  a  dulcet  plain ; 
But  swift,  on  pinions  lithe  and  strong, 
You  sought  a  place  for  your  wild  wrong 

God  only  might  discover, 
And  there  God,  calling,  came, 
And  flies  with  you  in  His  white  flame  — 
Your  wilding  mate,  O  plover ! 


RAIN  REVERY 

IN  the  lone  of  night  by  the  pattering  tree 

I  sat  alone  with  Poetry  — 

With  Poetry,  my  old  shy  friend, 

And  his  tenuous  shadow  seemed  to  blend  — 

Beyond  the  lampshine  on  the  sill  — 

With  the  mammoth  shadow  of  the  hill, 

And  his  breath  fell  soft  on  the  pool-dark  pane 

With  the  murmurous,  murmuring  muffled  hoof 

Of  the  rain,  the  rain 

The  rain  on  the  roof. 

In  the  vast  of  night  and  its  vacancy 

I  prayed  aloud  to  Poetry, 

And  his  luminous  eyes  grew  large  and  dim 

As  my  heart-pulse  quickened  to  question  him ; 

For  out  of  that  rumbling  rhymeless  rune 

He  only  might  know,  by  a  sense  atune, 

103 


104  THE   PRESENT   HOUR 

To  unravel  the  anguish,  and  render  vain 
The  remorseless  will  that  wove  the  woof 
Of  the  rain,  the  rain 
The  rain  on  the  roof. 

So  I  cried :    "  What  mute  conspiracy 
Have  you  made  with  the  night,  O  Poetry? 
Lover  and  friend  of  my  warm  doorway, 
Do  you  crouch  there  too  on  the  storm-soaked  clay  ? 
Did  you  creep  indoors  when  that  gust  of  damp 
Raised  the  dead  moon-moths  round  my  lamp 
And  the  wan  flame  guttered  ?  —  Hark,  again ! 
Do  you  ride  there  —  so  close,  so  aloof  — 
With  the  rain,  the  rain 
The  rain  on  the  roof? 

"Ah,  what  of  the  rapture  and  melody 

We  might  have  wrought,  dear  Poetry! 

Imagined  tower  and  dream-built  shrine, 

Must  they  crumble  in  dark  like  this  pale  lampshine? 


RAIN   REVERY  105 

Our  dawn-flecked  meadows  lyric-shrill, 

Shall  they  lie  as  dumb  as  the  gloom-drenched  hill? 

Our  song- voiced  lovers  !  —  Shall  none  remain  ?"  — 

Under  the  galloping,  gusty  hoof 

Answered  the  rain,  rain 

Rain  on  the  roof. 


THE  HEART  IN  THE  JAR 

A  Meditation  on  the  Nobel  Prize  Award  for  Medical 
Research,  1912 

I 

ALIVE  it  beats  in  a  bosom  of  glass  — 

A  glowing  heart! 

It  has  come  to  pass! 

Ventricle,  auricle, 

Artery  quivering: 

No  metaphorical 

Symbol  of  art, 

No  cold,  mechanical  trick  of  a  cog, 

But  ardent  —  an  organ  mysterious, 

Alive,  delivering 

Serene,  continuous 

Pulses,  poised  in  its  chamber  of  glass, 

Beating  —  the  heart  of  a  dog ! 
106 


THE   HEART    IN   THE   JAR         107 

II 

And  it  came  to  pass 

While  the  hearts  of  men 

Were  selling  and  buying 

The  blood  of  their  brothers, 

Then,  even  then  — 

While  grocer  and  draper 

And  soldier  were  eying 

Their  market-news  in  the  morning  paper, 

And,  musing  there  among  the  others, 

Their  poet  of  words 

Stood  staring  —  his  back  to  the  laboratory 

(Where  the  poet  of  life 

Plied  ether  and  knife)  — 

Stood  musing  his  rhymes  for  a  miracle-story 

Of  Babylon  queens  or  Attic  birds. 


108  THE    PRESENT   HOUR 

III 

Yet  others  were  there  more  strange 

(More  strange,  as  they  spoke  in  the  holy  name 

Of  the  human  heart,  while  still  their  eyes 

Were  blind  to  the  light  love's  visions  range)  — 

For  they  cried  :    "  Lo,  the  dog  —  he  dies  ! 

Spare  him  the  knife!    What  have  ye  done, 

Awarders  of  fame!    Will  you  grant  to  one 

Who  slaughters  —  the  great  world-prize?" 

Yet  these  are  the  same 

Who  cherish  the  deed  and  worship  the  pain 

Of  saints  that  offered  their  blood  in  fire 

For  the  meed  of  men, 

And  these  are  the  same  who  bend  the  knee 

To  One  who  hung  on  the  bleeding  tree 

Under  the  seraphim: 

In  the  name  —  in  the  hallowed  name  of  Him 

Who  raised  us  from  Caliban, 

Would  they  grudge  to  a  dog  —  what  a  god  might  aspire 

To  render  his  heart  for  the  Heart  of  Man  ? 


THE    HEART    IN   THE   JAR         109 

IV 

How  calm  in  its  crystal  tomb 

It  beats  to  the  mandate  of  life! 

How  hush  it  waits  in  the  sexless  womb 

For  the  hour  of  its  strange  midwife  — 

The  seer,  whose  talismanic  touch 

Shall  give  it  birth  in  another  —  what  ? 

The  heart  of  a  dog  once,  was  it  not? 

So  then,  if  it  still  be  such, 

Why,  then,  the  dog  —  (cur,  thoroughbred, 

Mastiff,  was  it,  or  hound  ?)  — 

What  of  the  dog?  —  is  he  quick  or  dead? 

His  soul  (as  they  used  to  say) 

In  what  Elysian  field  should  he  stray, 

Or  where  lie  down  in  his  grave? 

For  hark !  — 

Through  the  clear  concave 

Of  the  glass,  that  delicate  pulsing  sound! 

Ah,  once,  how  it  whirred  in  the  flooded  dark 

Of  his  deep-lunged  chest,  with  rhythmic  beat 


110  THE   PRESENT    HOUR 

To  the  wild  curvet  of  his  wonderful  feet 

And  the  rapturous  passion  of  his  bark, 

As  he  welcomed  his  homing  master's  hand, 

To  crouch  at  the  quick  command ! 

Yet  it  never  has  ceased  to  beat :  — 

Charmed  by  the  poet  of  life, 

Freed  by  his  art  and  the  cunning  knife 

That  counterfoils  the  shears  of  fate, 

See  it  quiver  now  in  that  golden  bar 

Of  noon  —  unlaboring,  isolate, 

Alive,  in  a  crystal  jar! 


The  heart  of  a  dog  —  why  pause  ? 

Why  pause  on  your  brink,  bright  jar?    Or  why 

This  reticent  allocution? 

A  dog !  —  Shall  I  stop  at  to-day,  because 

To-morrow  it  might  be  I  ?  — 

Yea,  and  if  it  be! 

Even  this  heart  of  me 


THE    HEART    IN    THE    JAR         111 

The  subtle  bard  of  life  with  his  blade 

To  sever  from  out  the  mystic  whole 

I  have  deemed  my  Soul 

And  shatter  me  —  like  no  cloven  shade 

Divined  by  a  Dante's  ecstasy  — 

In  morsels  to  immortality, 

Piecemeal  to  dissolution! 

This,  then,  that  knocks  at  my  breast  — 
Starting  at  the  image  of  its  own  inquest 
Hung  in  a  gleaming  jar  —  this  sentient  thing 
Responsive  in  the  night 
To  messages  of  grandeur  and  delight, 
Pensive  to  Winter,  passionate  to  Spring, 
Mounting  on  strokes  of  music's  rhythmic  wing, 
Beating  more  swift  when  my  beloved's  cheek 
Ruddies  with  rapture  the  tongue  fails  to  speak, 
And  pausing  quite 
When  her  rose  turns  to  white  — 
This  servant,  delicate  to  suffering, 


112  THE   PRESENT   HOUR 

Insurgent  to  restraint,  soothed  by  redress, 
This  shall  the  life-bard  place  upon  his  shelf 
Beside  the  dog  —  and  both  shall  acquiesce. 

VI 

For  he  —  artist  of  baffling  life  —  himself 

Sculptor  and  plastic  instrument  — 

He  holds  within  his  hand  the  vast  intent, 

And  carves  from  out  the  crimson  clay  of  death 

Incredible  images 

Of  quickening  fauns,  and  headless  victories 

More  terrible  than  her  of  Samothrace,  — 

Yea,  toys  with  such  as  these, 

As,  silent,  he  lifts  a  severed  Gorgon's  face 

Toward  his  own; 

(The  watchers  hold  their  breath, 

Hiding  their  dread.) 

Calmly  he  looks  —  nor  turns  to  stone, 

But  with  a  touch  freezes  the  sphinx  instead. 

Till  last,  all  pale,  beside  him  —  like  a  dream 


THE    HEART    IN    THE    JAR        113 

That  rises  into  daylight  out  of  sleep  — 

Death  rises  from  the  mystic,  crimson  stream 

And  murmurs  at  his  ear:    "What,  then,  am  I? 

And  what  art  thou  whose  scalpel  strikes  so  deep 

To  slay  me?    Yea,  I  felt  it  glance  me  by 

And  I  am  wounded !  Give  it  me  I"  —  They  clutch : 

Death  snatches,  and  his  frozen  fingers  touch 

The  scalpers  edge  —  when  lo,  a  lightning  gleam 

Ruddies  their  wrestling  shadows  on  the  night; 

Immense  they  lengthen  down  the  vasty  gloom 

And  darken  in  their  height 

The  rafters  of  a  silent  room: 

Around  its  walls,  ranged  in  the  crystal  jars 

Of  infinite  stars, 

Beat,  as  they  burn,  the  myriad  hearts  of  life; 

In  lordship,  where  their  lonely  shadows  loom, 

Death  and  the  Artist  grapple  for  the  knife. 


NOTES 


OF  the  poems  collected  in  this  volume,  those  in 
Part  I  (War)  have  been  written  during  the  last  ten 
weeks;  those  in  Part  II  (Peace)  have  been  selected 
from  poems  written  during  the  last  two  years  — 
chiefly  during  1914.  Most  of  them  have  been  pub 
lished,  separately,  in  the  following  journals  and 
newspapers,  to  the  editors  of  which  the  author 
makes  his  acknowledgments :  The  North  American 
Review,  Collier's  Weekly,  The  Outlook,  The  Forum, 
The  Independent,  The  Boston  Evening  Transcript,  The 
New  York  Times  and  Times  Literary  Supplement,  Tlie 
New  York  Evening  Post. 

NEW  YORK  CITY, 

October  26,  1914. 


116 


NOTES 

MOST  of  the  poems  in  this  volume  were  written  for 
special  occasions.  These  notes  record  the  dates  and  events 
which  called  forth  their  expression,  as  follows :  — 

I:  War 

Fight :  written  for  the  centenary  celebration  of  the 
naval  battle  of  Plattsburgh,  and  read  by  the  author  at 
Pittsburgh,  N.Y.,  September  11,  1914. 

In  the  naval  battle  of  Plattsburgh,  the  American  com 
mander  "  Macdonough  himself  worked  like  a  common 
sailor,  in  pointing  and  handling  a  favorite  gun.  While 
bending  over  to  sight  it,  a  round  shot  cut  in  two  the 
spanker  boom,  which  fell  on  his  head  and  struck  him  sense 
less  for  two  or  three  minutes;  he  then  leaped  to  his  feet 
and  continued  as  before,  when  a  shot  took  off  the  head  of  the 
captain  of  the  gun  crew  and  drove  it  in  his  face  with  such 
force  as  to  knock  him  to  the  other  side  of  the  deck." 

The  above  quotation  is  from  "  The  Naval  War  of  1812," 
by  Theodore  Roosevelt. 

The  Conflict:  These  six  sonnets  here  printed  were 
originally  published,  together,  in  the  Boston  Evening 
Transcript,  August  29,  1914.  The  first,  "To  William 
Watson,"  is  a  response  to  a  sonnet  by  Mr.  Watson  entitled 
"  To  the  United  States,"  first  published  in  The  London  Post, 
and  cabled  to  the  New  York  Times. 

The  Lads  of  Liege :  First  printed  in  the  New  York  Times, 
September  2,  1914. 

Carnage :  These  six  sonnets  were  first  published,  together, 
in  the  Boston  Evening  Transcript,  September  28,  1914. 

The  Muffled  Drums :  These  stanzas  (published  in  the 
New  York  Evening  Post,  September  3, 1914)  were  written 
117 


118  THE   PRESENT    HOUR 

with  reference  to  the  Peace  Procession  of  Women  in  New 
York  City,  August  29,  1914. 

Antwerp:  The  early  press  accounts  of  the  storming  of 
Antwerp  by  the  Germans  told  of  great  damage  to  the  city's 
architecture.  Later  accounts  have  described  a  less  amount 
of  physical  injury  inflicted.  This  sonnet,  however,  has  refer 
ence  less  to  the  physical  violence,  than  to  the  spiritual 
violation  wrought  by  unwarranted  invaders. 

Men  of  Canada :  First  printed  in  the  Boston  Evening  Tran 
script,  October  17, 1914,  shortly  after  the  sailing  of  Canadian 
troops  to  England. 

The  Child-Dancers:  The  little  children  of  the  Isadora 
Duncan  School  of  Dancing,  to  whom  these  verses  refer, 
came  to  America  in  September,  owing  to  conditions  of  war 
in  France.  Russian,  German,  French,  and  English,  they 
form  a  happy  and  harmonious  family  of  the  belligerent 
races. 

A  Prayer  of  the  Peoples :  This  poem  was  written  on  the  day 
of  President  Wilson's  Call  to  Prayer,  Sunday,  October  4, 
1914.  It  was  published  in  the  New  York  Times,  on  October 
fifth. 

In  Memoriam  :  Mrs.  Woodrow  Wilson  :  These  stanzas  were 
first  printed  in  the  New  York  Evening  Post,  August  13, 
1914.  Shortly  before  her  death,  the  earnest,  expressed 
wish  of  Mrs.  Wilson  for  the  passing  of  the  law  for  the 
betterment  of  conditions  in  the  slum  district  of  Wash 
ington  was  fulfilled  by  vote  of  the  Senate. 

II:  Peace 

Panama  Hymn:  Sung  by  a  chorus  at  the  Panama 
Festival  for  the  benefit  of  the  New  York  Association  for 
the  Blind,  New  York  City,  March  25,  1913,  for  which 
occasion  the  hymn  was  written.  It  was  published  in  the 
North  American  Review,  April,  1913. 


NOTES  119 


Goethals:  written  for  the  National  Testimonial  to 
Colonel  George  W.  Goethals,  and  read  by  the  author  at 
Carnegie  Hall,  New  York  City,  March  4,  1914. 

A  Child  at  the  Wicket :  This  poem,  which  narrates  a 
true  experience  of  the  author  at  Ellis  Island,  refers  by 
implication  to  the  now  historic  labor  troubles  at  Law 
rence,  Mass.,  in  1912. 

Hymn  for  Equal  Suffrage :  Written  for  the  Equal 
Suffrage  Meeting  (Authors'  Night)  held  at  Cooper  Union, 
New  York  City,  in  January  1914,  and  read  by  the  author 
on  that  occasion.  The  poem  is  based  on  one  of  a  like 
nature  in  the  writer's  play  "  Mater." 

Lexington :  Written  for  the  two  hundredth  anniversary 
of  the  incorporation  of  the  town  of  Lexington,  and  read 
at  Lexington,  Mass.,  June  8,  1913. 

School :  Written  for  the  centenary  celebration  of  the 
founding  of  Meriden  Academy,  and  read  by  the  author  at 
Meriden,  N.H.,  June  25,  1913. 

The  Player:  written  for  the  celebration  of  the  three 
hundredth  anniversary  of  the  birth  of  Shakspere,  and 
read  by  Mr.  Douglas  Wood  at  the  ceremonies  beside  Shak- 
spere's  statue  in  Central  Park,  New  York  City,  April  23, 
1914. 

Prologue  and  Epilogue  to  a  Bird  Masque:  Thesewere 
written  for  the  indoor  performance  of  the  author's  Bird 
Masque  "  Sanctuary  "  in  New  York  City,  at  the  Hotel 
Astor  Ballroom  Theatre,  February  24,  1914.  On  that 
occasion  they  were  recited  by  Mrs.  Charles  Douville 
Coburn  (in  the  r61e  of  Fantasy},  who  has  since  made  use 
of  them  in  the  performances  of  the  Masque  by  the  Coburn 
Players  at  various  American  universities. 

The  Heart  in  the  Jar:  written  at  the  time  of  the  an 
nouncement  of  the  award,  to  Dr.  Alexis  Carrel,  of  the 
Nobel  Prize  for  Medical  Research,  and  published  in  the 
New  York  Times  Literary  Supplement,  December  8,  1912. 


T 


HE  following  pages  contain  advertisements  of 
books  by  the  same  author,   and  other  poetry 


OTHER  WORKS  BY  PERCY   MACKAYE 


The  Sistine  Eve,  and  Other  Poems 

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most  moving,  perhaps  the  most  beautiful,  and  certainly  the  most  in 
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a  rare  degree  of  freshness  and  buoyancy,  and  it  may  honestly  be  called 
a  play  of  unusual  interest  and  unusual  literary  merit.  .  .  .  The 
drama  might  well  be  called  a  character  portrait  of  Chaucer,  for  it 
shows  him  forth  with  keen  discernment,  a  captivating  figure  among 
men,  an  intensely  human,  vigorous,  kindly  man.  ...  It  is  a  moving, 
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there  are  many  passages  of  real  poetry,  the  book  is  essentially  a 
drama."  —  St.  Paul  Dispatch. 


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A  Garland  to  Sylvia 

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Sappho  and  Phaon 

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so  admirably  blended.  .  .  .  The  dialogue  throughout  shows  Mr. 
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Fenris,  the  Wolf 

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The  Complete  Poetical  Works  of 
Geoffrey  Chaucer 

Now  first  put  into  Modern  English  by 

JOHN  S.  P.  TATLOCK 

Author  of  "  The  Development  and  Chronology  of  Chaucer's  Works,"  etc., 

AND 

PERCY  MACKAYE 

Author  of  "  The  Canterbury  Pilgrims,"  "Jeanne  D'Arc,"  etc. 

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The  publication  of  The  Modern  Reader's  Chaucer  is  a  pro 
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bard  in  language  that  twentieth  century  readers  unversed  in  Old 
English  can  understand  and  enjoy,  it  opens  up  a  rich  store  of 
fascinating  literature.  This  cheaper  edition  of  the  work  is  de 
signed  with  the  purpose  of  still  further  increasing  its  usefulness. 
It  departs  in  no  way  from  the  original  except  in  the  matter  of 
illustrations,  all  of  which  are  rendered  in  black  and  white.  The 
binding,  too,  is  simpler,  being  uniform  with  the  binding  of  the 
one  volume  edition  of  The  Modern  Reader's  Bible.  The  text 
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"  The  version  not  only  maintains  the  spirit  and  color,  the  rich 
humor  and  insight  into  human  nature,  of  the  original,  but  is  of 
itself  a  literary  delight." —  The  Argonaut. 

"  Those  who  have  at  times  attempted  to  struggle  through  the 
original  text  with  the  aid  of  a  glossary,  will  welcome  this  new 
form." —  Graphic,  Los  Angeles. 

"  Chaucer  is  now  readable  by  hundreds  where  before  he  was 
not  accessible  to  dozens.  The  book  is  a  veritable  mine  of  good 
stories.  .  .  .  The  volume  can  be  heartily  recommended  to  all 
lovers  of  the  lasting  and  the  permanent  in  literature."  —  Kentucky 
Post.  

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strong,  in  that  it  deals  with  that  great  social  process  by  which  all 
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Earth  Triumphant  and  Other  Tales 
in  Verse 

BY  CONRAD  AIKEN 

Cloth,  I2mo,  $1.25  net 

Conrad  Aiken  is  one  of  the  first  American  writers  to  choose 
to  tell  his  stories  in  verse.  Helston,  Masefield,  and  other  Euro 
peans  have  been  doing  it  with  marked  success,  but  hitherto  this 
country  has  had  no  notable  representative  in  this  line  of  endeavor. 
Though  Mr.  Aiken  has  been  writing  for  a  number  of  years,  Earth 
Triumphant  and  Other  Tales  in  Verse  is  his  first  published  book. 
In  it  are  contained,  in  addition  to  the  several  narratives  of  mod 
ern  life,  a  number  of  shorter  lyrics.  It  is  a  volume  distinguished 
by  originality  and  power. 

Van  Zorn:  A  Comedy  in  Three  Acts 
BY  EDWIN  A.  ROBINSON 

Cloth,  I2mo,  $1.25  net 

This  play  makes  delightful  reading  and  introduces  in  the  person 
of  its  author  a  playwright  of  considerable  promise.  Mr.  Robin 
son  tells  a  modern  story,  one  which  by  a  clever  arrangement  of 
incident  and  skillful  characterization  arouses  strongly  the  reader's 
curiosity  and  keeps  it  unsatisfied  to  the  end.  The  dialogue  is 
bright  and  the  construction  of  the  plot  shows  the  work  of  one 
well  versed  in  the  technique  of  the  drama. 


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RABINDRANATH  TAGORE'S  NEW  DRAMA 


The  King  of  the  Dark  Chamber 

By 

RABINDRANATH  TAGORE 

Nobel  Prizeman  in  Literature,  1913;  Author  of  "Gitan- 
gali,"  "The  Gardener,"  "The  Crescent  Moon," 
"  Sadhana,"  "  Chitra,"  "  The  Post-Ofiice,"  etc.  Cloth 
12  mo,  $1.25  net. 

"The  real  poetical  imagination  of  it  is  unchangeable; 
the  allegory,  subtle  and  profound  and  yet  simple,  is  cast 
into  the  form  of  a  dramatic  narrative,  which  moves  with 
unconventional  freedom  to  a  finely  impressive  climax;  and 
the  reader,  who  began  in  idle  curiosity,  finds  his  intelligence 
more  and  more  engaged  until,  when  he  turns  the  last  page, 
he  has  the  feeling  of  one  who  has  been  moving  in  worlds 
not  realized,  and  communing  with  great  if  mysterious 

presences." 

The  London  Globe. 


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A  LIST  OF  PLAYS 

Leonid  Andreyev's  Anathema $1.25  net 

Clyde  Fitch's  The  Climbers 75  net 

Girl  with  the  Green  Eyes 1.25  net 

Her  Own  Way 75  net 

Stubbornness  of  Geraldine 75  net 

The  Truth 75  net 

Thomas  Hardy's  The  Dynasts.     3  Parts.     Each 1 . 50  net 

Hermann  Hagedora's  Makers  of  Madness l.oonet 

Henry  Arthur  Jones's 

Whitewashing  of  Julia .75  net 

Saints  and  Sinners .75  net 

The  Crusaders .75  net 

Michael  and  His  Lost  Angel 75  net 

Jack  London's  Scorn  of  Women i .  25  net 

Theft 1.25  net 

Mackaye's  Jean  D' Arc 1.25  net 

Sappho  and  Phaon 1.25  net 

Fenris  the  Wolf 1.25  net 

Mater 1.25  net 

'  Canterbury  Pilgrims 1 . 25  net 

The  Scarecrow 1.25  net 

A  Garland  to  Sylvia 1.25  net 

John  Masefield's  The  Tragedy  of  Pompey 1. 2 5  net 

Philip,  the  King 1.25  net 

William  Vaughn  Moody's 

The  Faith  Healer 1.25  net 

Stephen  Phillip's  Ulysses 1.2  5  net 

The  Sin  of  David 1.25  net 

Nero 1.25  net 

Pietro  of  Siena i .  oo  net 

Phillips  and  Carr.    Faust 1.25  net 

Edward  Sheldon's  The  Nigger 1.2  5  net 

Romance 1.25  net 

Katrina  Trask's  In  the  Vanguard 1.25  net 

Rabindranath  Tagore's  The  Post  Office i .  oo  net 

Chitra i .  oo  net 

The  King  of  the  Dark  Chamber 1.25  net 

Robinson,  Edwin  A.    Van  Zorn 1.25  net 

Sarah  King  Wiley's  Coming  of  Philibert 1 . 25  net 

Alcestis 75  net 

Yeats's  Poems  and  Plays,  Vol.  II,  Revised  Edition 2.00  net 

Hour  Glass  (and  others) 1.25  net 

The  Green  Helmet  and  Other  Poems 1.25  net 

Yeats  and  Lady  Gregory's  Unicorn  from  the  Stars 1.50  net 

Israel  Zangwill's  The  Melting  Pot.     New  Edition i .  25  net 

The  War  God i .  25  net 

The  Next  Religion 1.25  net 

Plaster  Saints 1.25  net 


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-C:  BERKELEY  LIBRARIES 


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